The World’s Largest Art Theft is Committed

March 18th, 1990

(Note: While the image is AI generated, the research and writing was carried out by a human, me.)

Today 34 years ago, two men dressed as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston after hours under false pretenses, overpowered the two security guards present and made off with 13 works of art with a combined estimated value of up to 600 million dollars. The set included paintings by Rembrandt, Degas, Vermeer and others.

Due to lack of funds, the museum did not have state-of-the-art security systems in place, which had already made it a known potential target in the underworld. Though there were many leads, and the Boston mafia was strongly suspected of having carried out the heist, no one was ever convicted. None of the art work was ever recovered, either, and a 10 million dollar reward along with a promise not to prosecute upon return of the works (the statute of limitations has expired as well) are still available.

Art theft is a multi-billion dollar business, and it is estimated that tens of thousands of works of art are stolen each year, though most thefts occur in private homes. For very well-known art, there is often a buyer before the theft, for otherwise it is extremely difficult to sell it: putting it on the market exposes the thieves to the risk of being reported. Potential buyers, on the other hand, have to consider that they cannot openly display the art and that shortly after a well-publicized theft, fakes may appear on the black market. Given that there is no penalty and a big reward for the return of the Boston artworks, it is probably safe to assume that they hang somewhere around the world in the homes of wealthy and unscrupulous collectors. The FBI maintains a national stolen art file, a database of stolen art and cultural property, which may be accessed here: https://artcrimes.fbi.gov/