The empty frames of the world's biggest art heist
In 1990 two men in police uniforms walked out of a Boston museum with 13 masterpieces - and three decades later, the frames still hang empty.
Shortly after midnight on 18 March 1990, two men dressed as Boston police officers talked their way into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, claiming to be responding to a disturbance. They restrained the night guards and spent the next hour stripping the galleries.
They took 13 works by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Manet, and Degas - among them Vermeer’s “The Concert,” one of only a few dozen surviving works by the artist, and Rembrandt’s only seascape. By value the haul has been estimated at around $500 million, regarded as the largest-value art theft in history.
The case is still unsolved. No arrests have been made, and not a single work has been recovered.
The museum offers a $10 million reward for information leading to the art’s return. As stipulated by the founder’s will, the empty frames remain on the walls where the paintings once hung.
Sources & references
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