The Biggest Unsolved Museum Robbery: A Cash Prize for Whoever Finds the Artworks

Berfin Ceren Meray
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In 1990, one of the most notorious art heists occurred when two thieves broke into the Gardner Museum and stole 13 priceless works of art worth an estimated total of $500 million under the cover of darkness. To this day, the fate of the stolen works remains a mystery. In this article, we will delve into the details of the Gardner Museum heist, which is considered the largest and most expensive robbery in the history of art. Keep reading to uncover the story of this captivating unsolved crime.

Museum robberies and fake works of art in the art world are not just fantastic events that we watch in movies! Even the world famous Mona Lisa was stolen from the museum in 1911...

Among the hundreds of art theft cases that have taken place, we will tell you the biggest robbery in which the suspects have not yet been caught and the works have not been found!

The world's most expensive known museum robbery took place in America just 32 years ago, in 1990.

Museum employees who woke up on the morning of March 18 and came to work noticed that some artworks had been stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the heart of the city of Boston.

Only 13 pieces were stolen from this huge museum, which has more than 15 thousand works of art in total. This number may sound little, but fasten your seatbelts: the total value of 13 pieces of work exceeds 500 million dollars!

So how did this robbery take place.

Of course, you probably think that in a museum with such large and multimillion-dollar works of art, high-end devices are used and there is always strict supervision.

However, the Gardner Museum used both the old type of surveillance system and hired young and inexperienced employees instead of professional security guards. Moreover, according to the information provided by the museum employees, only two security guards were on duty at the huge museum during the night shifts...

Two thieves wearing police uniforms managed to trick the unfortunate security guard who was on duty that night, and after entering the museum, they tied the 23-year-old official's hands and blindfolded him and locked him in the room.

After that, two thieves entered the 'Blue Room' and made a robbery worth half a billion dollars in just 81 minutes! Let's take a look at the artworks that were stolen in 81 minutes now;

First of all, the "The Concert" work of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer dated 1664,

"A Lady and a Gentleman in Black" by Rembrandt, another Dutch painter who was one of the pioneers of the Baroque movement (1633),

In addition, the famous painter's work "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee" of the same date,

The painting "Chez Tortoni" by Edouard Manet, one of the most famous painters of France, dated 1875,

A bronze eagle ornament belonging to French gothic architecture,

And apart from this famous work, a self-portrait by Rembrandt, a landscape painting by Flinck, a container from Ancient China and finally 5 watercolor and pencil works by Edgar Degas have disappeared...

No matter how valuable the stolen works are, why the thieves chose these pieces is a matter of complete curiosity. Especially when there are much more valuable works by Michelangelo and Titian in the same museum!

That's why most people also think that the robbery was planned in detail long in advance and that these two thieves may have been used only as intermediaries.

What do you think happened after the robbery? Unfortunately, neither the thieves nor the stolen artworks have been traced yet, and the investigations are still ongoing with the two robot pictures you can see below...

In addition, the museum is offering a reward of exactly $ 10 million to those who find traces of the artifacts!

For more details, you can also watch the documentary "This Is a Robbery: The World's Greatest Art Heist " released by Netflix in 2021.

Finally, we should not think of art theft as the work of artists only. Works of art are an important part of our human history, as well as valuable works for all of us that have traces that illuminate our past...