I love an art museum. And I’ve been to a few, I’ll tell you. We always try to visit the major museums when we travel to a new city. Or an old city. My favorite, by far, is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in New York City. I could spend days there if left to my own devices.
There’s something about the air in these museums. Not the chemical makeup of the air — which by the way, is made up of approximately 78 percent nitrogen and 21 percent oxygen. The Earth’s air also has small amounts of other gases, too, such as carbon dioxide, neon, and hydrogen. But I’m off track again. No. I love the “air” in the museums. The feeling. The stillness. The wonder of creation.
I also like those movies when the thieves plan a big heist. Huge banks, precious jewels, sacred documents. But the plots that are the most fun to watch are the art heists.
So when it happens in real life, I am especially interested. Like when the Mona Lisa went missing (1911) or The Scream (twice — 1994 and 2004).
I’m reminded by all of this because the largest art robbery in United States history occurred on this date, March 18, 1990. It took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. On that day, thirteen works of art worth over $500 million are stolen from the museum.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was founded in 1903. By none other than Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924). One might think this is self-appreciating, but her story is interesting.
Isabella was wealthy from the very start. She was born in NYC, and her dad was a rich linen merchant. In her early adulthood, she moved to Boston, but she never felt accepted by members of Boston’s aristocracy. And during that time, she felt compassion for others who were alienated, namely artists.
At any rate, she married some guy. A rich guy. And they had a baby boy. But the son died in 1865. And when that happened, Isabella was immensely grieved.
So. She and her husband escaped to Europe. She became absorbed by the art there. They stayed for three years, but when she returned, she was more accepted in the social scene. Isabella had become a serious collector of great art by the late 1880s.
Then, her father died in 1891, and Isabella received a sizable inheritance. She used it to fund her astonishing collection.
Then, bad news again. Her husband died suddenly in 1898.
She grieved again and turned to art for comfort once more. This time around, she bought the land on which the museum now stands. And began the work of building her “home,” which would eventually be the museum. Her main goal was to share her art with anyone who wanted to see it. She wanted the public to experience what she had acquired.
Anyway, back to the heist. As I mentioned, it occurred on March 18, 1990, when two thieves broke into the museum. They were posing as Boston police officers. By the end of their escapade, they walked away with those thirteen works of art.
The crime is still unsolved — $500 million worth of art — gone.
Here’s the thing. After Isabella Gardner died in 1924, the museum fell into disrepair. Gradually. Also, security became increasingly lax. This made the museum an easy target.
The entire heist lasted 81 minutes. And while those two pseudo-cops were inside creeping around, a rowdy Saint Patrick’s Day celebration was taking place outside.
Here is roughly how it went.
• At 1.24 AM, those two burglars, the police officers, pretended to respond to a Saint Patrick’s Day disturbance.
• The burglars strong-armed the two guards on duty and trapped them in the Gardner Museum basement. (The guards, Rick Abath and Randy Hestand were 23 and 25 years old.)
• The crooks disabled the cameras and removed the art from their frames. They left the building at 2.45 AM.
The works stolen were various paintings by Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and others.
So where’s the art? They are hanging all over the world, I imagine. In some extremely rich people’s homes. Russian oligarchs, Middle East oil kings, Mexican drug lords, and on.
It wasn’t what Isabella Gardner imagined for her art. But the Universe does what it does, and we stand, and we watch as it all spins by. And we take the time to appreciate what we have, for the time we have it.
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“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”
― Mark Twain
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“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
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“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window
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Art today, gone tomorrow.
