Was the Art From the Gardner Museum Ever Recovered?

Art|Art Museum

The Gardner Museum Heist is one of the most infamous art thefts in history. On March 18, 1990 two men disguised as police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts and stole 13 works of art worth an estimated $500 million. The stolen works included masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas and Manet.

The heist has gone unsolved for 30 years and many people have speculated that the paintings were destroyed or scattered around the world. The FBI has investigated several leads over the years and even offered a $5 million reward for information leading to their recovery. In 2017, a Boston-based artist started a new search for the missing artwork, launching an online platform that allowed users to digitally “tag” photos of potential locations where the paintings might be located.

The Gardner Museum has also done its part to encourage people to help find the artwork by offering free admission on March 18th each year and displaying empty frames where the stolen art once hung. Recently, museum officials have been working with Italian authorities to try and track down some of the missing pieces. In 2019 a painting by Dutch artist Jan Steen that was stolen in the heist was found hanging in an Italian home and returned to its rightful owner.

Despite this recent success, none of the other 12 pieces of artwork have been recovered yet. There’s still hope that they could be found someday, but until then they remain lost forever in what has become one of art history’s greatest mysteries.

Was the Art From the Gardner Museum Ever Recovered? Unfortunately none of the other 12 pieces of artwork from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist have been recovered yet but there is still hope that they could be found someday.