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犯罪與劫案
1990年3月18日 · 波士頓伊莎貝拉·斯圖爾特·加德納博物館
藝術品盜竊狀態: 未破
詳細檔案目前僅提供英文版本。
圖片: Federal Bureau of Investigation · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
13works of art, valued at half a billion dollars
In 1903 Isabella Stewart Gardner left her art collection in a Venetian-style palace in Boston, stipulating that the arrangement must never be changed. By 1990 the security was outdated: two young guards were on duty at night, the only alarm button to the police was at the desk, and the paintings were not individually protected. The collection was, moreover, not insured against theft.
At 1.24 a.m. on 18 March 1990, after the St Patrick's Day celebrations, two men in police uniform rang the bell and said they were responding to a report. A guard let them in, against the rules. The men tied up both guards in the basement and spent 81 minutes in the museum. They cut canvases from their frames and took thirteen works, among them Vermeer's 'The Concert' and Rembrandt's 'The Storm on the Sea of Galilee'.
The thieves' choice has never been explained: they left more valuable works on the wall and also took a bronze eagle and a Chinese beaker. The FBI followed thousands of leads in the United States, Europe and Japan. In 2013 the bureau stated that it knew who the thieves were, members of a criminal organisation from New England who had since died, but names and evidence were not made public.
None of the works has been recovered and nobody has been charged; the statute of limitations on the theft itself has expired. The museum offers ten million dollars for information leading to their return. The empty frames still hang in the galleries, as a reminder and because the will forbids any other arrangement. It is regarded as the largest art theft in history.