G
Gardner Museum art theft
The Event Thieves steal valuable artworks worth
more than $200 million
Date March 18, 1990
Place Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston,
Massachusetts
The largest art theft in U.S. histor y, the case remained un-
solved in the early twenty-first centur y.
At 1:24a.m.on March 18, 1990, two men wearing po-
lice uniforms persuaded guards to let them into
Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to inves-
tigate reports of a “disturbance.” The men then
bound the guards and left, a little over an hour later,
with thirteen pieces of art and the film from the mu-
seum’s video surveillance camera.
The stolen works included one of fewer than
three dozen paintings attributed to Johannes Ver-
meer,The Concert, two paintings and a tiny etching by
Rembrandt, five drawings by Edgar Degas, and a
painting by Edouard Manet. One of the Rem-
brandts,The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, is the great art-
ist’s only seascape. The thieves also took a Chinese
ku, or wine beaker, and the eagle-shaped finial, or
top piece, from a Napoleonic battle flag.
The artworks were estimated to be worth $200 to
$300 million, but several factors—including the care-
less manner in which some of the paintings were cut
from their frames—suggest that the thieves were ama-
teurs. Although the Vermeer and the Rembrandt sea-
scape were certainly valuable, the thieves ignored the
greatest painting in the collection (and arguably the
greatest Italian Renaissance painting in any Ameri-
can museum), Titian’sRape of Europa. The beaker and
the Degas prints were not particularly noteworthy,
and the thieves did not even bother to break a glass
case in order to remove the Napoleonic flag itself.
The works may have been identified ahead of
time by an unscrupulous collector, since the Vermeer
and Rembrandt paintings are so well known that
they could not be sold openly. Yet another theory
holds that the works were to be offered as ransom for
imprisoned members of the Irish Republican Army.
Suspicion focused on notorious art thief Myles
Connor, who admitted to “casing” the museum years
earlier with associate Bobby Donati. Connor claimed
that Donati (whose 1991 murder remains unsolved)
hired two men to carry out the Gardner theft.
Although a reward of $1 million (later increased
to $5 million) was offered for the works’ return, and
although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (which
at one time had thirty agents working on the case)
offered immunity to those involved, the case has
never been solved.Impact Many critics view the Gardner Museum
theft as symptomatic of the frantic atmosphere and
inflated prices of the art market during the 1990’s—
factors that fueled a thriving commerce in stolen art.
At the time of the theft, it was estimated that the
trade in such art amounted to between $1 and $2 bil-
lion per year.Further Reading
Houpt, Simon.Museum of the Missing: A Histor y of Art
Theft. New York: Sterling, 2006.
Lopez, Steve. “The Great Art Caper.”Time150, no.
21 (November 17, 1997): 74-75, 77, 79-80, 82.
Mashberg, Tom. “Stealing Beauty.”Vanity Fair, March,
1998, 214-219, 255-259.
Grove KogerSee also Art movements; Business and the econ-
omy in the United States; Crime. Gates, Bill
Identification Cofounder and chief executive
officer of Microsoft
Born October 28, 1955; Seattle, WashingtonGates became the world’s richest entrepreneur on the success
of his Windows operating system.