Gardner Museum Art Heist Update

Just about a year ago, the FBI informed the press about new developments in the case of the massive art theft in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that took place on March 18, 1990. We'll cover the updates, then hear the original episode on the theft. Read the show notes here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from
how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson. I'm gonna do something a little different
today for the next few episodes. Do not be alarmed.

(00:24):
I'm taking a little bit of time off to handle
some personal business. Yeah, do not. Is not anything scary.
Uh No, Tracy just has a busy life and some
life things happen in such a way that you got
to take a moment and step back and work on those. Yeah. Well, normally,
what we do when we have when one of us
is taking time off or both of us are taking
time off, is we record extra episodes and the weeks

(00:46):
leading up to it so that everything continues uninterrupted, seamlessly. Yeah.
That the time did not allow for that. We would
have had to record like four extra episodes in a week,
and that is not actually manible. That is how research
falls apart. Yes, So what we're gonna do for today
and for a couple more episodes after today, is that

(01:08):
we are going to talk about some episode updates, Yeah,
which a lot of people ask for. Yeah, So what
we're gonna do is we're going to tell you some
new information about what's going on. Uh, and then we
will let you listen to the episode from the archive today. Uh,
we are talking about the huge art theft from the

(01:28):
Isabella Steward Gardener Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, from our episode
originally called What's the Highest Value Art Heist in History?
We get so many letters about this. Yes, so just
about a year ago we're recording this. In April, the
FBI informed the press about new developments in the case

(01:49):
of the art theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum,
and that theft originally took place on March eighteenth. Thieves
who were dressed as Boston police officers gained entry to
the museum them that night by basically walking up and
saying they were cops. And then they walked off with
multiple pieces of art, including of her Mere and three
rem brands. And these were worth about five hundred million dollars.

(02:11):
And this was such a dramatic and simultaneously simple art
theft that it has led many museums to dramatically revamp
their security practices since then. We didn't have much to
add to the story back in but it now seems
like a good time to talk about it. Yeah, so,
Special Agent Richard de Larier said that the FBI believed

(02:33):
with quote a high degree of confidence that it knew
where the art was taken after the theft, as well
as the identities of the two men who committed the
original break in. They didn't name the men, however, and
the location of the art is still unknown. And this
announcement was also about publicizing the case. The FBI asked

(02:53):
for the public's help in solving the crime and spread
the word about the ongoing five million dollar reward for
information leading to the recovery of the paintings in good condition.
That sounds like a huge reward, but remember the value
of the stolen items was more than five hundred millions.
So this is where our episode becomes a brief public
service announcement. The FBI asks for anyone with information about

(03:17):
this crime to call them at one eight hundred call
FBI and that's one eight hundred, two to five, five,
three to four, or to submit tips online at uh
tips dot FBI dot gov. Before we turn you over
to Katie and Sarah, who were the original hosts of
this episode, we're going to take a brief moment and
have a word from our sponsor, and now we will

(03:39):
hand you off to the past a little bit to
Katie and Sarah uh telling the story of the theft
and of the museum's founding, and a little bit about
Isabella Sewer Gardner herself. This episode was originally published on
May five, so it's a few years back. We hope
you enjoy it. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

(04:03):
Katie Lander and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and our story is
going to start with the highest value art heist in history,
so that's a pretty good place, right. It's also a
story about mustaches, and from there it's going to take
us all the way back to turn of the century
Boston with a socialite art collector who loves boxing in

(04:23):
the House of Worth and baseball, and she ends up
building one of the most beautiful art collections in the country.
So we have a lot to talk about, something for
everyone today. So we're going to set our scene, which
is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It's this quiet, tucked
away Venetian palace on the Fenway in Boston, and it's

(04:43):
March eighteenth, as St. Patrick's Day. Revelers are coming back
on their way home, and at one four a m
the museum's buzzer sounds. The guards look out to see
what looks like two Boston policemen outside wearing almost comically
large mustaches. Uh we kind of thought of the hot

(05:04):
cops here from arrested development. But the policemen say they
need to check out a reported disturbance, so the guards
let them in, but minutes later they're cuffed, bound in
duct tape, and after shutting off the video cameras, the
thieves head up to the museum's Dutch room and their
first target is an early self portrait by Rembrandt, but
it's a heavy panel in this heavy gilt frame and

(05:27):
it won't come out, so they just leave that one
on the floor. The canvas Rembrandts are a little easier
to deal with, though the thieves slash them out of
their frames, which it's almost worse than the book of
Kel's being written in I Think and run off with
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee and
a lady and gentleman in black. Two Rembrandts. They're gone now,

(05:49):
and next is Vermier's The Concert, which they take from
an easel, and then a govert flink and then they
move on with these big works, and they take another Rembrandt,
a little tiny etching about the size of a postage stamp,
and a bronze Chinese beaker, before passing by all these
other amazing works about a Celia raphael A Frangelico, before

(06:10):
taking five drawings by Digga, And all of this happens
under the John Singer sergeant portrait of the museum's founder,
Isabella Stewart Gardner. And Sarah said, in a movie, you
would have to film it with her eyes and the
portrait she's watching the whole thing, and then her ghost
would come and haunt them or something. Um. They try
to take a flag of Napoleon's Imperial Guard, but they

(06:32):
can't get it either, so they end up just taking
the little bronze finneal of an eagle at the top.
And the final thing they take is the minn A oil,
which is kind of awesome, by the way, if you
look it up. It's a guy writing in this enormous
top hat. And they don't touch Titian's Europa, even though
it's the most valuable thing in the museum. So they

(06:53):
spend ninety minutes inside this whole time, and they tell
the guards you'll be hearing from us in about a year.
But now it's twenty years later. There have been offers
of immunity, a five million dollar reward, and all of
this art, which is valued at two hundred million to
five hundred million dollars, is just gone. So how did

(07:15):
so much priceless art, these old masters, high Renaissance paintings,
famous American works, a really extensive Asian collection, how did
they all end up in this beautiful, tiny Venetian mansion
with a lush enclosed courtyard, fountains and statutory You should
look it up online. It's really gorgeous. That's because for
nearly forty years Boston had a really great collector, the

(07:37):
socialite Isabella Stewart Gardner. And Isabella Stewart was born in
eighteen forty in New York City and her father was
a wealthy merchant, and her family even claimed dissent from
the Royal Stuarts, But that's kind of a dubious claim.
That's just one of those things that people say, who
wouldn't like to be related to American Scots. She was
educated in private schools in New York and pair US,

(08:00):
and she befriended Julia Gardner abroad. She eventually married her
friend's older brother, John L. Gardner, known as Jack in
eighteen sixty and they moved to Beacon Street in Boston together.
But her entry into the art world was partly brought
on by a personal tragedy uh Their son, John Gardner
the third, known as Jackie, died when he was two

(08:20):
years old of pneumonia, and she falls into a deep
depression and she gets really sick, and her doctor recommends
that jack take her traveling, and so they go to
Scandinavia and Russia and Vienna and Paris, and by the
time she comes back, she's feeling a lot better. And
they've also started to pick up little, you know, pretty
things along the course of their travels and bringing them

(08:42):
back to their Beacon Hill home. And they don't have
any more children, although they do raise their three orphaned nephews,
and they travel even more extensively after that, the Middle East,
Central Europe, Asia, all around the United States, although perhaps
unsurprisingly considering the museum's design, their favorite spot was Venice,
where they stayed at the Palazzo Barbara. And Isabella is

(09:04):
a very social woman too, so don't think of just
her and her husband off on these private travels all
the time. The museums archives actually have seven thousand letters
from one thousand correspondent So she's a busy lady. She's
really social, but that doesn't mean she's necessarily popular with
the Boston Brahmin's. She's different. She's got all this traveling,

(09:26):
she's mingling with American ex pats like Henry James Singer,
Sergeant James McNeil, Whistler, and she's generally very extravagant, spending
thousands of dollars on these paintings, Charles Worth clothing and jewels.
So she's an outsider. Yeah, she's never totally accepted by
that society, but she's so amazing and she cuts her

(09:47):
own profile in it. You know, who wouldn't want to
hang out with her? I know, she's really great. But
one critic wrote that she was the most dashing of fashions,
local finishers, who can order the whole symphony orchestra to
her house for a private musical, So there you go.
And her taste were really broad. It wasn't just that
she was interested in art. She was also really into

(10:09):
the Red Sox and boxing and hockey, Harvard football, and
horse races. So she had. But it doesn't take long
for her to get up, you know, beyond picking up
pretty little souvenirs on her travels and get into really
serious art collecting. And she does this by the mid

(10:30):
eighteen nineties and starts hanging up all her paintings at
her Beacon Hill house, leading the extras on chair. So
I can imagine, just like, oh gosh, where am I
going to even put this Rembrandt? I just thought. She
has an advisor to Bernard Berenson, who does a lot
of her buying, and she has also befriended some influential
people in the Eastern art world, like Okacora Cucuzo, who's

(10:52):
famous for writing the Book of Tea and helping to
preserve Japanese artistic styles. Today there's a copy of the
book at the museum. Her first major old Master purchase
comes in eight two, and it's of her mere the concert.
It's eventually stolen in the heist, and it costs her
just over six thousand dollars. And this is kind of

(11:13):
weird to think of. Now you I don't know, I
guess you imagine old Masters paintings always being expensive in
in high demand. But that's not really the case. In
eighteen nine two, this was a pretty progressive purchase, and
she heads off a trend a few years later. American
buyers think American industrialists with lots of money or snatching

(11:34):
up all the Old Master paintings they can, right. And
you you told me something cool from a book you
were reading about grain and painting. Yeah, it was a
book by Cynthia Saltzman called Old Masters New World. I
think I kind of want to read it now. But
she said that a lot of this rush on European art,
and specifically Old Masters works that were being held in

(11:56):
England came because the English started importing American grain, and
consequently their prices fell in their land value fell. And
you have all these old lords who aren't making rent anymore,
earning the pinch. Yeah, And meanwhile, their inheritance taxes are
going up, their property taxes are going up, and they're

(12:17):
more willing to sell off the old Rembrandt they have
in the manner. And meanwhile, of course we have our
American tycoons getting fabulously rich but also wanting to cultivate culture.
It might remind you of our hearst podcast very much hers.
And because Americans are building all these new big museums,
they need art to fill them up with. And this

(12:39):
in turn influences generations of American artists who are able
to go and see these great works from old masters
from the Italian Renaissance and not have to go all
the way to Europe to to see a painting gardeners
not just about the old masters, though, she's not your
your average art collector. She wrote to Barons in a

(12:59):
night and hun read you know, or rather you don't
know that I adore Giotto and really don't adore rembrand I,
only like him, And he wrote back, I am not
anxious to have you own braces of Rembrandts like any
vulgar millionaire. And Sarah's a big Giotto fan A loves
this is another point in Isabella's favor um. Her love
for Italian Renaissance art makes her by Botticelli's Death of

(13:23):
Lucretia for fifteen thousand dollars, and that's actually the first
uh Botcelli to come to the United States. And she
likes contemporary art. We've already mentioned. She's friends with singer
Sergeant and whistler um, and she sees herself not just
as a woman decorating her home and kind of fitting
into that um Victorian standard of I don't know, Victorian

(13:48):
realm for women, but more like a Renaissance patron of
the arts, kind of like Lauren Yeah, or more specifically
Isabella dste who we mentioned in our Catherine de Medici podcasts,
and in six her friend Henry James takes her to
Singer Sergeant's London studio to see Madam X, which is

(14:08):
of course a very famous and very lovely painting, and
he does a head on, full body painting of her
in front of a Venetian brocade, which James describes as
a Byzantine madonna with a halo, and Sergeant displays it
as a woman in a enigma. It really does look
like a halo. The brocade's pattern is directly behind her head.

(14:29):
It's pretty cool. But after Gardner's husband died in eighteen ninety,
her collecting took a different turn and she started to
build a museum and she wanted to make her private space,
you know, her Beacon Hill home with paintings leaning on chairs,
into a public space where everybody could come and appreciate
her works of art, and she helps with the design,

(14:50):
with the construction. She takes a very active role in
the building of this museum, and it kind of reminded
us of the Hearst Castle because it has this mix
of styles. You walk into one room that's decorated in
a certain way and then into another that's completely different,
and all of this faces in on a gorgeous courtyard

(15:11):
with windows and balconies that honestly look like they'd be
in a capulate. Juliet's going to lean out of one
of the balconies at any second. And the museum opens
to the public in nineteen o three, and she has
a phoenix above the door along with a coat of arms,
and I guess her own personal motto, which is Simon Prazier,
which I don't know. I like that it's a pretty

(15:34):
bold statement to make at the at the gate of
your museums. And she slows down on the collecting later
in her life to try to leave the museum with
a nice endowment. When she died in nineteen four after
a series of strokes, she'd saved up a million dollars
for the museum, with enough left over for charitable donations
for the prevention of cruelty to children into animals, and

(15:57):
the museum is given to Boston as a public in
aitution with a catch. Nothing can be changed, rearranged, added,
or removed, although in two thousand nine a Massachusetts court
did decide that there could be an addition made by
Renzo Piano, who did the High Museum edition here in Atlanta.
So the short story is, if you go to the

(16:19):
Gardener Museum today, it's going to look exactly like Isabella
Stuart Gardener intended it to look. It's it's her house,
it's her museum, except that, of course the ninet thieves
weren't so kind as to follow her wishes. So when
you enter the Dutch room there are gaping frames where
masterpieces should be. So that brings us back to her

(16:43):
heist and the question where our gardeners missing masterpieces and
there's a good chance that they've actually been destroyed by now.
When Sarah was explaining this to me, she said that
sometimes the art was too hot to unload, which I
love because apparently she has a secret life. It makes
me sound like a hot I don't know about um,
but they're probably part of the dark, shadowy art, black market,

(17:07):
where art is often used as collateral instead of cash
for drugs and guns, which no idea that art would
be collateral. But according to Alexander Smith, who worked with
the Art Loss Register, it keeps this huge, long record
of all the hundreds of thousands of artworks that are
missing stolen um she She says that with tighter banking regulations,

(17:31):
it has become difficult for people to put big chunks
of money in financial institutions without getting noticed. So now
feeds go out and steal a painting, so it's easy cash,
I guess. But we want to make it clear that
most thefts aren't as glamorous as say the two thousand
two heist in Paraguay where thieves dug in eighty foot tunnel,

(17:52):
or our gardener heist with the false mustaches, not the
Thomas Crown affair. According to a Smithsonian article by Robert Pool,
it's usually just someone with inside access who lifts a
stored work and walks off, because, of course, most museums
don't have their whole collection out a lot of looks
and stories. Imagine a print that's in a museum spacement

(18:13):
and nobody thinks anyone will notice. Since the Gardener heist
is ostensibly the highest profile job in the world. There
have been tons of leads, tips and bizarro theories, some
of which I will tell you. One is that the
i RA staged it to use as a bargaining chip
for jailed members. And this is another thing. If you

(18:33):
think of of artworks being used as cash, they can
also sometimes be used as get out of jail free
cards because there's the immunity. Yeah, because authorities will want
to get the artworks back so desperately there they'll offer
immunity to anybody involved. Another idea is that it was
planned out by a musician who had performed with Roy

(18:55):
Orbison before he was nabbed for another theft. Another is
that the artwork are hidden in Ireland's West Country, which
is a theory. Yeah, this is very strange. It's a
theory developed in part because so many of the stolen
goods were kind of horsey in theme, like the dig
oust gushes are all equestrian subjects, and since the Irish

(19:18):
love horse was so much maybe maybe there's a connection. Um.
Some also have said that it was taken as security
by Boston crime boss James Whitey Boulger with the help
of compromised FBI agents. But Sarah, you know a little
bit more about that one than I do. Well, Boulger
in the local FBI office did work together. They worked

(19:38):
together to brain down an Italian crime family, which consequently
was also Bulger's main competitor in Boston. But it leads
to him buying off some of his FBI handlers and
an FBI supervisor, John Connolly, And Boulger is actually still
one of the FBI's ten most wanted fugitives, and he's
been charged with racketeering, conspiracy, narcotics distribution, and nineteen counts

(20:02):
of murder. So people think he's the only guy in
Boston at the time who would have been able to
get those paintings out of the country since he had
this FBI connection. And our latest word comes from April
two thousand ten and the Boston Globe, and that's that
the FBI was hot on the trail of the art,
which this time was being held by a Corsican gang.

(20:24):
But that bureaucratic infighting and an inability for the FBI
to work with their French counterparts blew the whole thing up.
So in conclusion, the art is still missing. Um we
hope that it's being well cared for and that someday
it will find its way back to its lovely home
in Boston. Meanwhile, there's plenty of neat stuff to see

(20:46):
at the museum and now carries much better theft insurance
and uh a much more intense security system than it
used to. And another side note, if your name is Isabella,
you can go to the museum for free. We might
need to change our names and go visit. And we
have a quote, our final quote from Barrenson on Gardner,

(21:07):
which I will let you read Sarah, since she loved
her so much, and that is she lives at a
rate in intensity and with a reality that makes other
lives seem pale, thin and shadowy. And that's the final
word on Isabella Stewart Gardner. Okay, so before we wrap

(21:27):
things up, if you are interested in the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, there are lots and lots of pictures on
their website, which is at Gardner Museum dot org. You
can go to their collection page. You can see floor
plans of what all of the galleries look like. You
can get a sense of what all of these beautiful,
beautiful rooms look like a lot of the collection you

(21:50):
can also see online. So if you are somewhere far
away from Boston, Massachusetts, but this awesome museum and awesome
house sound really intrigued to you, you can go to
the museum's website and get a sense of a little
of it for yourself, and we will also put a
link to that in our show notes. If you would
like to write to us about this or anything else,

(22:11):
you can. We're at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
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(22:33):
works dot com. If you would like to learn more
about what Holly and I and Katie and Sarah all
talked about today, you can come to our website, put
the words Gardner Museum in the search bar, and you
will find an article called ten Impressive Art Heists, which
includes the story of this art theft. You can learn
about all of that and a lot more at how
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(22:59):
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