What do you think of this fact?
Walk through the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston today and on some walls you’ll see: nothing. Just a golden frame without a picture. It isn’t a concept piece, it’s a reminder of the biggest unsolved art heist in the US.
The night after St. Patrick’s Day
Shortly after midnight on March 18, 1990, two men in Boston police uniforms rang at the museum door. They said they were responding to a call. A guard let them in. That turned out to be a mistake.
The fake officers stayed inside for 81 minutes. Afterward, 13 works of art were missing, worth more than 500 million dollars together. Among them were Rembrandt’s only known seascape, “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee” from 1633, and Vermeer’s “The Concert”, one of only about 36 known paintings by the artist. They also took a painting by Manet.
A ten million dollar reward
Nobody has seen the paintings since. In 2017, the museum doubled its reward for information leading to their return, from five to ten million dollars. Still nothing turned up.
And the empty frames? They’re still hanging. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s will required her collection to stay the way she arranged it. So the frames stay where the paintings belong, as placeholders for their return.
Bonus fact: The thieves didn’t just go for the big names. According to Hyperallergic, the 13 stolen objects include five works by Degas.
The case is one of the art world’s biggest mysteries. There are theories and speculation, but no paintings.
A museum that puts its gaps on display. Somehow the most honest exhibit in the whole building.