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Poole of Smithsonian magazine, the seemingly random assortment of stolen goods has confused authorities and journalists for decades. Édoard Manet's Chez Tortoni (1875) numbers among the stolen works.Ĭourtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Stranger still, the perpetrators left possibly the most expensive work in the museum untouched: Titian’s The Rape of Europa, which was hanging in a third-floor gallery. They also picked up a self-portrait sketch by Rembrandt, five sketches by French Impressionist Edgar Degas, a small portrait of a man by Édouard Manet and an ancient Chinese bronze vessel.īizarrely, the burglars attempted to remove the flag of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard from its frame but failed to do so, instead settling for a bronze, eagle-shaped finial, or ornament.
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The thieves made a beeline for some of the museum’s greatest treasures, including Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, the only known seascape painted by Rembrandt A Lady and Gentleman in Black, also by Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert, one of just dozens of the Dutch Old Master’s paintings to survive today. The perpetrators stole masterpieces by Vermeer and Rembrandtīut left the most expensive painting in the building untouched.
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Per the Gardner Museum, it's valued at $250 million. 1664) is described by some experts as the most expensive piece of stolen artwork in the world. after making two separate trips to their car with the artwork in tow the night guards, their mouths duct-taped shut, remained trapped in the museum basement until the police, called in by the next set of guards to arrive at the museum, found them around 8:15 a.m. Once inside, the criminals overpowered the hapless guards, disabled the security cameras and got to work removing precious works of art from their frames. Dressed in stolen police uniforms, the burglars pretended to be cops responding to a disturbance call linked to the rowdy Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations taking place outside. Late on the night of March 18, the two thieves tricked the young guards on duty, 23-year-old Rick Abath and 25-year-old Randy Hestand, into buzzing them inside. Image: John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1888 Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924), a wealthy American philanthropist and art collector, founded the museum in her Venetian-inspired Boston home in 1903. By 1990, the museum’s security flaws were common knowledge among Boston’s criminal elite, making it a bit of a “sitting duck” for a heist, per the Guardian. Wealthy American art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner constructed her namesake museum out of her private, Venetian palazzo–inspired home in the hope that it would provide “ for the education and enjoyment of the public forever.” But after her death in 1924, the museum fell into financial disrepair. The thieves likely succeeded due to canny planning, luck and lax security. The Boston Globe's coverage of the 1990 Gardner museum art theft As Adrian Horton reports for the Guardian, the four-part show builds on the reporting of the Boston Globe and WBUR, as well as the FBI’s ongoing investigation.įor amateur sleuths and art lovers alike, here are five key things to know about the infamous heist. Now, a new Netflix docuseries, “ This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist,” takes a deep dive into the thorny mysteries surrounding the crime. Just over an hour later, the thieves made off with a staggering collection of art that’s valued today at $500 million.ĭespite a flurry of press attention-and the $10 million reward offered by the museum for the items’ safe return-the stolen works have never been recovered. The pair proceeded to remove 13 treasured artworks on display in the lavishly decorated gallery, smashing the protective glass of two Rembrandt paintings and cutting the canvases from their gilded frames. “Gentlemen, this is a robbery,” the criminals announced. They overpowered two unsuspecting night security guards, then duct-taped their victims to a pipe and a workbench in the museum basement. on March 18, 1990, two men dressed as police officers walked into Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. From start to finish, the biggest art heist in modern history lasted just 81 minutes.