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Theft at the museum: the world’s biggest unsolved art heist
On March 18, 1990, 13 works of art valued at a combined total of $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in Boston.
In the early hours, guards admitted two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance call. Once inside, the thieves tied up the guards and over the next hour committed the largest-value recorded theft of private property in history.
Despite efforts by the FBI, no arrests have been made and no works have been recovered. The museum offers a reward of $10 million for information leading to the art’s recovery.
$200m Gardner Museum art theft
Boston Globe, 19 March 1990
Two men posing as police tie up night guards.
In what was described as the biggest art theft since the 1911 robbery of the “Mona Lisa,” two men posing as police officers gained entry to the Gardner Museum early yesterday, restrained two security guards and left with an estimated $200 million worth of art, police said.
The works stolen included paintings by Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt and Edgar Degas, museum officials said.
In a daring, middle-of-the-night robbery, police said, the two men knocked on a side door of the world-famous Gardner in Boston’s Fenway section at about 1:15 a.m. and told the security guards there was a disturbance in the area, and were allowed to enter.
Source: www.bostonglobe.com
The Day After the Gardner Museum Heist
Boston Magazine, 19 March 2015
This year is the 25th anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner theft.
If March 18, 1990, was the day Boston woke up to find some of its most priceless art had gone missing, then March 19, 1990 — 25 years ago today — was the day the newspapers starting asking where it had gone, and why.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the art heist at the Gardner Museum, an occasion that carries all the more interest because, of course, the stolen art works still remain at large.
The paintings were stolen in the early hours of March 18, so it took newspapers until March 19 to begin processing the news. Back when the crime was fresh, investigators and reporters wasted no time running through a stream of theories. A common thought, put forward in analyses in the New York Times and the Boston Globe, was that the thieves were working on behalf of someone who knew exactly which paintings from the Gardner collection he or she wanted. Why else would they bypass other expensive works for such a specific set of pieces?
The thieves apparently went into the museum with a shopping list of generally small-scale Dutch and Impressionist paintings. In doing so they passed up the Italian works for which the museum is best known, including Titian’s “Rape of Europa”, which has been called “arguably the greatest painting in America”. In a puzzling twist, they walked by more valuable pieces and ignored them.
25 years later, with the statute of limitations long past, the goal, for investigators and probably for readers too, has shifted. The U.S. Attorney’s office has said it will consider offering immunity to the thieves in exchange for the works. Before, they wanted answers and perhaps justice. Now, they just hope to find the paintings.
Source: www.bostonmagazine.com
Will Boston’s $500m art heist ever be solved?
The Guardian, 19 January 2018
A recent extension to the $10m reward has led to renewed interest, and theories, about the 1990 robbery of major artworks.
It remains the world’s biggest unsolved art heist and the museum announced last week that they are extending a $10m reward for art stolen 28 years ago. According to Steve Kidder, president of the museum’s board, the museum doubled the reward and made it indefinite because they remain hopeful that the art will make a comeback. “This reward demonstrates the commitment of the museum to the recovery of these important works,” Kidder said in a statement. “We are the only buyer for these works and they belong in their rightful home.”
The FBI has said the stolen artworks were on sale in Philadelphia in the early 2000s, and that the heist was done by a criminal organization. Arthur Brand, a Dutch investigator and art adviser, is still working on leads in Ireland. He encourages people who have access to the paintings to reach out to him. “Nobody has come forward,” said Brand. “It’s complicated. It’s a strange case.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
In 2026, read the latest updates on the FBI website: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist