Mystery of the Gardner Museum Art Heist

Art museums are places where valuable pieces of art are stored and protected while oftentimes being displayed to the general public for enjoyment. Given that they hold valuable pieces of art, this makes them large targets for crime. A famous example is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, which occurred at an art museum in Boston. The museum was founded by Isabella Stewart, who wanted to share her collection of valuable pieces of art with the public. The museum opened in 1903 and had a variety of art pieces, from paintings to furniture, collected from all around the world. When Gardner passed away, she left a plan outlining how she wanted everything to be in a certain way, meaning that if things were stolen, they couldn’t be replaced easily to her liking.

On March 8, 1990, a heist was planned, an attempt to steal pieces of art with a simple plan to achieve this. The heist began with two men entering the museum, their cover was pretending to be two police officers. They were able to get into the museum undetected and successfully steal 13 separate pieces of art. Some of the art pieces they stole belonged to famous artists like Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. Something very astonishing is how they were able to escape without being confronted by anyone. They also remained inside the museum for about 81 minutes while they had the luxury of being able to steal exactly the pieces they desired. They were able to cut pieces out of frames and even left large amounts of art behind because of the presumed wealth they gained from what they took. With that being said, this is one of the greatest mysteries in art crime history, the case is still unsolved. Many rewards were offered in order to have the pieces of art returned, however, not even one piece was returned.

Something the museum chose to do as a reminder of what occurred on that day is that they left the frames of artwork on display. The frames are completely empty, serving as a memory of the magnitude of the crime as it cements itself in the history of art crime. This heist that occurred 36 years ago shows how easily art can be connected to crime. This is because of the high value of the art. These paintings were made for peoples enjoyment, but because of their financial value, it is often associated with horrible crimes. Given the riskiness and possible repercussions of attempting to steal such a piece of art, people, and in particular these two men, took the chance. More than 3 decades later, this mystery still remains unsolved, which adds to its gravity in art and crime history.