The Art Forger

The 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is one of the most famous unsolved art crimes in history. In the early morning hours of March 18, two men disguised as Boston police officers entered the Gardner Museum, telling the guard that they had been sent on a report of a disturbance. They tied the guards up and spent the next hour looting the museum, ultimately stealing 13 artworks worth more than $500 million, including 11 paintings, a French Imperial Eagle finial that had been carried into battle by Napoleon’s army, and an ancient Chinese bronze vessel. The works included paintings by major artists such as Rembrandt (his only ocean scene, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee), Vermeer (The Concert, one of only 34 known paintings by the 17th-century Dutch master, believed to be the most valuable stolen object in the world, with an estimated value of $250 million), Degas, and Manet. The paintings were cut from their frames. Several empty frames are still exhibited at the museum, both to remind patrons about the heist and to fulfill Isabella Gardner’s wish that the museum never be changed.

Despite decades of investigation, the works have never been recovered, and the crime now has a solid place in Boston’s cultural mythology.