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The Gardner Museum was bestowed upon the city as a public institution by art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner. In her will, the single condition that she placed on the donation of the museum’s collection, which included a broad sample of visual art from around the world, was that it remain exactly as she had arranged it.

The heist

After Gardner’s death in 1924, the collection remained unaltered until March 18, 1990, when a major art heist stripped the museum of 13 valuable works, including those by Johannes Vermeer, Édouard Manet, and Rembrandt van Rijn. The theft, undertaken by two thieves dressed as Boston police officers, was examined in the 2005 documentary Stolen.

Placeholders

To this day, the paintings have not been recovered, but most of their frames remain in their original places on the wall, (such as the one pictured below)—both in accordance with Gardner’s wishes, and in the hope that the art will one day return.

Empty frame that held Rembrandt van Rijn's stolen painting "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee" (1633) at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. (art thefts, art heists) The theft of 13 works of art from the museum occurred in 1990.

© Renata Tyburczy/Dreamstime.com

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