How to Celebrate Being Robbed 25 Years Ago

A good website can be a lot like a good piece of art, or even a good art heist—simplicity is a virtue.

When Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was robbed on March 18, 1990, all it took was a couple fake police uniforms, perhaps fake mustaches, and some duct tape to get $500 million worth of art. Two men showed up at the museum, claiming to be police officers responding to a disturbance. Instead, they taped the guards up in the basement and made off with 13 pieces of art, including a Rembrandt, a Vermeer, a Manet and five pieces by Degas. It is the largest property theft in US history, and 25 years later, the art is still missing.

The investigation continues, and the FBI claims to have tracked the art to "the Connecticut and Philadelphia regions," but the museum still doesn't have the paintings back. But what we have now is an enduring mystery and a stellar website marking the anniversary of the inauspicious occasion.

The suspects. Image: FBI

"While we don't like to use the word 'celebrate' because it's not a joyous occasion for us, we wanted to make sure to mark the anniversary and the milestone it represents by truly honoring the artwork itself," Kathy Sharpless, communications director of the museum, told me over the phone. "There's a lot of coverage of how the artwork left the building, but we thought it would be really valuable to step back and say 'how did they get here in the first place."

No one wants their museum to be known only as the site of a famous heist—indeed this sentiment formed the gist of an open letter by a Boston Globe art critic—and the virtual tour gives the museum an opportunity to make the work and their backstory front and center, even in their on-going absence.

On the site, one can virtually stroll the galleries as they exist today, notice where the pieces were, and with a bit more clicking read telegrams marking the purchase of Manet's Chez Tortini or the elegantly scripted sales receipt for a number of Degas paintings and also a John Singer Sargent. It's no coincidence that the site is reminiscent of Google Street View.​

In addition to open letters appearing in the Globe and the website, the theft's anniversary is being marked in other ways. One of the guards who had been duct taped in the basement recently appeared on NPR's Storycorps, and his story of both the night and the subsequent years is pretty heartbreaking.

"At the time of the robbery I had just dropped out of Berklee College of Music. I was playing in a band, and working night shift at the museum," Rick Abath said. "I was just this hippie guy who wasn't hurting anything, wasn't on anybody's radar and the next day I was on everybody's radar for the largest art heist in history."

Thus Abath's personal low became an art world low. One gets the impression, though, that it could've happened to anyone at the museum. "You know, most of the guards were either older or they were college students," Abath said. "Nobody there was capable of dealing with actual criminals."

The FBI announced a $5 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the paintings, which in the past has led them as far as Japan, where they—and the much-chagrined owner—found a convincing copy of the Rembrandt. But none of the real paintings yet.

"We remain optimistic that the art will be returned," Sharpless told me. "Typically in art theft, the art is returned either shortly after the theft occurs or a generation later, and sadly we fall into the latter. But again, we're optimistic."

Until then—and this is cold comfort for a city that's seen its fair share of cold—there's a website.