Boston's Greatest Unsolved Mystery: The Gardner Museum Art Heist

Boston's Greatest Unsolved Mystery: The Gardner Museum Art Heist

At 1:24 AM on March 18, 1990, two men disguised as cops walked into the staff entrance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. They quickly overpowered the two security guards behind the desk and duct-taped them to a pipe and a workbench in the basement.⁠

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Then, over the next 81 minutes, they proceeded to steal $500 million dollars worth of art from the walls, including works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. Despite a $10 million reward for the recovery of the stolen paintings, not one has been found. Go inside the baffling story of the world’s biggest art heist by following the link in our bio.⁠

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In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Guards admitted two men posing as police officers responding to a disturbance call, and the thieves tied the guards up and looted the museum over the next hour. The case is unsolved; no arrests have been made and no works have been recovered. The stolen works have been valued at hundreds of millions of dollars by the FBI and art dealers. The museum is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to the art's recovery, the largest bounty ever offered by a private institution.

The stolen works were originally procured by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) and intended for permanent display at the museum with the rest of her collection. Among them was The Concert, one of only 34 known paintings by Johannes Vermeer and thought to be the most valuable unrecovered painting in the world. Also missing is The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Rembrandt's only seascape. Other paintings and sketches by Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, and Govert Flinck were stolen, along with a relatively valueless eagle finial and Chinese gu. Experts were puzzled by the choice of artwork, since more valuable works were left untouched. The collection and its layout are permanent, so empty frames remain hanging both in homage to the missing works and as placeholders for their return.

The FBI believes that the robbery was planned by a criminal organization. The case lacks strong physical evidence, and the FBI has largely depended on interrogations, undercover informants, and sting operations to collect information. They have focused primarily on the Boston Mafia, which was in the midst of an internal gang war during the period. One theory is that gangster Bobby Donati organized it to negotiate for his caporegime's release from prison; Donati was murdered a year after the robbery. Other accounts suggest that the paintings were stolen by a gang in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, though they deny involvement even after a sting operation put some of them in prison.

All have denied any knowledge or have given leads that were fruitless, despite being offered reward money, reduced prison sentences, and even freedom if they gave information leading to recovery of the art.

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