A Brief History of Art Theft
Why do art thefts capture our imaginations? And which ones remain unsolved? Read below to learn more!
Art heists capture public attention for a variety of reasons. They involve artifacts of nearly immeasurable value. They center around famous artworks, which the general public is often familiar with. For paintings grabbed from a museum (as opposed to the large-scale theft of art that happens during upheavals like World War II), art heists usually involve an improbable theft, either from great skill or from unimaginable luck on the back of a poor plan. And finally, they create mysteries as investigations can continue for years or even decades.
Perhaps the most famous early art heist of the 20th century was the 1911 heist of the Mona Lisa. Just like today, the Mona Lisa was housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris in the year 1911. Its heist was amazing for its brazenness. A man named Vincenzo Peruggia, dressed in the same smock that all museum workers wore, walked into the gallery containing the Mona Lisa on August 21, 1911. The gallery was closed to the public that day, so Peruggia was able to take the picture from the wall, conceal it, and then walk out of the museum without being detected. In fact, no one noticed for over a day that the painting had gone missing. The missing Mona Lisa inspired an exhaustive search—Pablo Picasso was even questioned (he did part with some other stolen artifacts in the course of the investigation). The missing painting captured the attention of audiences around the globe. Indeed, the scandal of the theft—and the two intervening years that the painting remained missing—may have even catapulted the Mona Lisa to the height of the art world, making it the instantly-recognizable painting that it is today. Eventually, the painting was recovered when Peruggia tried to return the painting to a museum in Italy, in the hopes of claiming a reward. He didn’t get his reward, but the painting was safely recovered and eventually returned to the Louvre.
Art thefts have continued to grab headlines in more recent decades. For instance, in both the 1990s and the 2000s, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam had several priceless van Gogh paintings stolen. In the case of the 1991 robbery, the paintings were quickly recovered. In the case of the 2002 robbery, while people were convicted in court for the robberies, the paintings remained missing for over a decade. In September 2016, the paintings were finally recovered near Naples, Italy.
Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream (which exists in several versions) has also been targeted by art thieves. The first theft was in 1994, on the opening day of the Olympic Games being held in Norway. That day, thieves broke into the National Gallery in Oslo, stealing its copy of The Scream. It was recovered three months later. The following decade, in 2004, a different copy of The Scream was stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo, along with Munch’s Madonna. In 2006, police announced that both of the paintings had been safely recovered.
Perhaps the biggest art heist from a museum ever happened at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston. This is a heist that continues to grab public attention because of the number of paintings, how famous they were, and their price tag. And—over 20 years later—the crime still remains unsolved and the whereabouts of the paintings—if they still exist—unknown. Early in the morning of March 18, 1990, two thieves (posing as police officers) gained entry. They went through the museum and stole a curious collection of 13 items. Some of the paintings that they stole were world-class, such as Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee and Vermeer’s The Concert (pictured above). Some of the items, though, had relatively little value or were relatively unknown. And at the same time, some other famous and extremely valuable paintings were left in place. In addition to the confusing nature of the items taken, after 30 years, the identity of the thieves is still unknown. Indeed, no one is sure if the paintings even survive somewhere today. Periodically, the heist from the Gardener Museum reappears in popular culture, with a variety of specials, news reports, and true crime documentaries about the event.
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