An Unsolved Art Heist Is Back in the Spotlight

FBI sketch of suspects

Source: Image by the FBI on Wikipedia Commons

A new Netflix docuseries, "This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist,” looks into the mystery surrounding 13 works of famous and valuable works stolen from a Boston museum.

In March 1990, the art pieces were lifted from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The FBI valued the works at a combined $500 million, ranking it as the single largest property theft in the world.

As featured in the documentary, the heist went down like this: A vehicle appeared at the side entrance of the museum, and two men masquerading in police uniforms knocked on the door saying they were responding to a disturbance. A guard on duty opened the door, in what a museum spokesperson later said was a lapse of protocol. The thieves handcuffed the guard in addition to another guard on duty at the time and took them both to the museum basement. They duct-taped them to a pipe and bench, and then one of the robbers told the guards, according to the documentary, "Gentlemen, this is a robbery."

Eighty-one minutes later, at 2:45 a.m., the thieves fled with 13 paintings cut from frames. The works included Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Vermeer's The Concert, Flinck's Landscape with an Obelisk, an ancient Chinese Bronze beaker, and a self-portrait etching by Rembrandt.

The FBI estimates that art and cultural property crime—which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines—has annual losses in the billions of dollars.

The Gardner theft has long haunted the art world and investigators, wrote Robert Wittman, Special Agent and senior investigator with the FBI Art Crime Team, in his book Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures, referring to the heist as "the greatest unsolved art crime in history."

"At the time, the paintings they stole were worth $300 million. Today that's $500 million," Wittman told Vice Media Group. "That's the single largest property crime—not just art theft—in U.S. history."

But thieves often get stuck with the goods they intended to sell, Wittman said in an NBC interview. "The true art in art theft is not in the stealing, it’s in the selling," he said. "But when somebody steals a world famous painting, they quickly discover it’s too famous to fence. And they’re stuck with something they can't sell."

So why do kleptomaniacs continue stealing valuable art when it's so difficult to sell? Because, Wittman said, "Criminals are better thieves than businessmen."

Anthony Amore, director of security at the Gardner Museum and author of The Art of the Con, agreed. "Thieves are certain they’re going to make loads of money. Then it hits the press and they realize this is going to get them in trouble." And, as noted Amore's book Stealing Rembrandts, "Art thieves have been far better at accruing prison time than wealth."

In 2013, the FBI, along with the Gardner Museum and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, held a news conference to increase interest in the theft, asking for help in recovering the stolen artwork. “We’ve determined in the years after the theft that the art was transported to the Connecticut and Philadelphia regions," said Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston Field Office. "But we haven’t identified where the art is right now, and that’s why we are asking the public for help.”

The head of the FBI's investigation agreed. “With these considerable developments in the investigation over the last couple of years,” said FBI Special Agent Geoff Kelly, “it’s likely over time someone has seen the art hanging on a wall, placed above a mantel, or stored in an attic. We want that person to call the FBI.”

For their part, today the Gardner Museum is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolen works.

The Netflix filmmaker said publicity from the four-part series should also help locate the paintings.

“Like the series. Don’t like the series,” Colin Barnicle told Artnet News. “It’s the biggest wanted poster you could hope for.”