#boston art heist

[queershavinthoughts]

Things i think about:

If random games had really big like, dedicated communities. Like,.im talking old nintendo levels of communities dedicated to finding the most perfect way possible to play this one game. The latest example for this is Coins per run in Subway Surfers (ala. Tetris glitched colours levels but with how many coins you could get before the speed of the character is too fast to humanly collect them).

My current theory for the boston art heist which is that it was just a really strange art protest of some kind (i could probably prove this if i was american).

Fish sometimes

What life could be like if the fundamental laws of physics were different. Like, what would it be like if magnetism was reversed? What would happen to atoms? What would be holding the neutrons and protons together? How would electrons move? Would electrons and the nucleus switch places and have the neutrons and protons be circling the electrons? How would electron exchange work then? Would it just be a world of like infinite nuclear reactions all the time from neutrons and protons smashing into each other?

Thats all

[ca-d]

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 🖤

[educationaldm]

With heists being all the rage, the Boston Globe has recreated one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in the history of art into a D&D Module. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist.

[marzipanandminutiae]

the other reason the "vandalize art" method of protest bugs me- which it wouldn't in isolation because it's never something that causes actual damage; the flour was removable -is that the commentary from the group is ALWAYS something like "well, why care about that when climate change exists?! how DARE you give a shit about art when Bad Things are happening!!!"

and like. bad things are ALWAYS happening. you can care about more than one thing! loving art and beauty and history are basic parts of the human experience- part of what we're fighting to save from climate change. part of what makes life worth protecting

shaming people for enjoying things is always a No from me

(also, is it just me, or do they never vandalize modern art? I can think of plenty non-oil-painting or ancient structure pieces that represent oodles of greed, corruption, vanity, etc. but happen to have been created after 1920. Boston's City Hall hurt way more people than the Mona Lisa ever did, seeing as a bunch of 19th-century working-class commercial and residential buildings were bulldozed to construct a huge Brutalist space-hog)

[otrtbs]

i don't know if you've been asked this before, but how did the idea of 'art heist, baby' come about, like inspiration and stuff?

(also i am in love with your fics and writing!! <3)

hi!! thank you so much!!

so much inspiration was taken from the show money heist on netflix, the goldfinch by donna tartt, the isabella stewart gardner museum heist in boston, the title of the fic comes from hozier’s ‘wasteland, baby!’

those are the big ones to name a few !!!

[memecucker]

There's literally no such thing as "art theft" lmao. You're a reactionary.

The 1990 heist of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston resulted in the theft of estimated to be around $600million making it the highest valued art theft in history and one of if not the largest unsolved heists in modern history

[becomeawendybird]

christmas

It's Coming on Christmas (23.8k, g) vermont, girl direction, christmas, hallmark movie, fluff, small town, magic

Wrapped in Red (15.1k, t) fake dating, christmas party, meet cute, fluff

This Winter's Day (14.8k, m) regency romance, country estate, gentry, illness, stables, libraries

You're Invited (8.5, m) girl direction, fake relationship, office christmas party, blind date, dating apps, fbi agent louis, boston

All Alone on Christmas (6.4k, e) sequel, christmas surprise, smut, massage, boxer harry, fluff

Twelfth Night (6.3k, g) royal au, regency, masquerade, meet cute, mistaken identity, prince harry, fluff

Set Your Heart A-Whirl (4.9k, g) home for christmas, party, childhood friends, family, banter, big brother louis

Even Christmas Can't Compete with Your Glow (4.5k, m) christmas party, werewolves, instincts, mates, shifting, full moon

new year's eve

One Minute to Midnight (29.5k, m) holiday parties, curses, cursed older louis, sugar baby harry, finance guy louis, light angst

thanksgiving

Looking for Life Out There (1.3k, t) girl direction, pining, long distance relationship, grad student harry, boston

winter/snow

Buried Like Treasure (40.2k, e) prince harry, thief louis, art heist, strangers to lovers, shibari, lingerie

[idkjustlemmedrownlikerab]

Guys it's an endless cycle, a cycle I'll never be able to get out of

I like art history and the Isabella Stewert Gardener heist in Boston 1990 is my Roman Empire

So every time I think of the Boston heist I remember art heist baby! Then I remember the heist they flawlessly pull off in the book, the same heist Regulus dies finishing, then I think about the house in Brazil which was supposed to be theirs but James has to grow old there alone then I think about the painting James stole for Regulus in the end, then I think about other paintings in the 19th century and then I think of the biggest heist in history aka Boston in 1990 and the deadly cycle continues...

[dogyip]

hello, I'm Waya, your local butch lesbian with a fixation on dog motifs and coyote symbolism. I'm a writer primarily, an artist occasionally, and a werewolf connoisseur always.

most of my stories revolved around lesbians, werewolves, and neurotic addicts in sobriety. I tend to focus on writing serials or short stories but write novels when I'm feeling particularly incomprehensible. all my writing for any story listed below (or otherwise) that i finish i also share on my patreon in full, for free!

when i follow: short story, read here — The continual meeting of two intertwined souls as they find each other after every reincarnation. Mostly.

the sparrows: serial, slice of life, drama/crime — Caught in a cycle she can't escape, when Benji Russells is hired to rob blind a renowned art collector, she never considers saying no. However, what's thought to be a one-off heist turns into a pursuit of righting the wrongs committed by the wealthy and powerful as Benji falls further into her addiction and the life she wants to leave behind.

satureia: serial, slice of life, drama — Wes Cross is the recently promoted chef of Satureia, a prestigious restaurant settled in Philadelphia, but the chaos of the food industry is the least of her issues when work begins bleeding into the life she leads outside of the kitchen.

edge of the lonely quiet: novel, werewolf, thriller — In 2003, Vivian Hart, a journalist for The Boston Accentor, is assigned to investigate the peculiar disappearance of a man when authorities refuse to look any further into the case.

She enlists the help of private investigator, Benji Russells, and together they trace a pattern of disappearances back to the grounds of a strange pack of werewolves living in the mountains of Los Angeles.

But what once was a simple investigation turns into a fight for survival when the sinister motive of the pack's leader becomes clear, and Vivian and Benji find themselves at the center of ten years of well-hidden brutality in a cult's compound at the very ends of the earth. Little do they know that getting out alive is the easiest thing they'll do.

[theinstagrahame]

It's been like 2 weeks? But I think the hiccup we had with the local Post Office kind of benefitted my collection here. That and a sale at Exalted Funeral...

Here's what's arrived in the last little bit:

The Slow Knife: I like Mousehole Press in general, but the pitch for this one in particular sticks out to me. You're a cabal of evil people who have deeply wronged someone, and they're coming for revenge. One by one, they kill each of you until their wrath is sated. I'm honestly always a little iffy on playing "Evil" characters, but this seems like a really neat way to tackle it.

Koriko: Also from Mousehole, this is meant to be a solo game in the vein of Kiki's Delivery Service and other quiet coming-of-age kinds of stories. It's also an absolutely beautiful book (and it came with the most adorable fat wizard cat patch...)

Star Crossed & Love Letters: I've heard stories and APs of Star Crossed, but never played it. Then there was an expansion coming, and it seemed like the right time to get myself a copy. The box is huge, I assume so I can store a Falling Tower game inside? I also often think about the creator, Alex Roberts, saying that the awards for this game have been nice, but that a couple who broke a chair after playing it is the real reward...

I Have the High Ground: I initially got this game from its crowdfund run after listening to the Party of One episode, but I spaced when it shipped and had it sent to my old Boston apartment. I never went back for it, but it was offered as a bonus on the Star Crossed expansion, so I decided it was time. (Also, there's a great Party of One episode that's a Star Crossed X IHTHG crossover, which is extremely worth checking out)

The Wildsea & The Wildsea - Storm and Root: I'd missed the original game, but the expansion caught my eye. The art and the vibe are weird and fun, but it's loosely a FitD engine under there. I skimmed through the Quickstart, and it felt really gripping. Weird guys sailing weird boats on the trees of a weird Earth future. The forest as a sea metaphor? I'm intrigued.

Nest: Spencer Campbell makes bangers. This is a long-time opinion of this blog, so Nest was a quick pick-up. It's set in his Destiny-like (I think?) Nova-verse, but it follows the bad guys. It's got Heist-y vibes, and I really like the idea of fleshing out the "Evil" team. It's too easy to assume the bad guys aren't people, and humanizing them does a lot.

Dusk, Vol1: Spencer Campbell makes Bange--oh, right. Already established. But still! Also a Nova-verse book, and one that I sorta missed. If I've read the pitch, it's about community within the Nova universe, and I like that that's a focus. People coming together to build communities is a theme I really enjoy, and when the sun explodes (yeah, that's what the Nova in Nova-verse means), I think we'll need people more than ever.

Eco Mofos: I really loved the universe created in Lost Eons, and this promised to be a loose prequel. It's a "weird-hope" game, which is loosely a description of why I love post-apocalyptic fiction. The idea that even in the worst possible outcome for the world (y'know, it ending), people come together to protect and help each other. That's what makes apocalyptica appealing.

Monster of the Week - Codex of Worlds Apocrypha: MotW is a well-established and really nicely designed game. I think I've only ever played it, but I honestly feel comfortable running it, because I've listened to so many APs and read so many of the materials. Apocrypha was the stretch goal collection for the Codex of Worlds expansion, which itself put a little of the best bits from FitD into the PbtA classic.

FIST: I backed the Kickstarter edition, but this was in Exalted Funeral's damaged section (I think for a slight creas on the cover?), so I wanted to grab it and see what the hype was about. Paranormal Mercenary action, is the game. I've heard nothing but good things, so it was an easy investment for me.

Haunted Almanac: Nate Treme is a name I've heard around the scene for a while, but hadn't really checked out until recently. In part because of the RTFM podcast episode about Tunnel Goons, which is included in this book. I don't want to admit that I'll just get anything that Max and Aaron tell me to get, but like... this book is great.

The Last Caravan: Backed this at the height of my FitD interest, and I'm really curious to see what's inside. Survivors of an alien attack in the titular caravan, traveling to survive and maybe fight back a little? Yeah. That sounds dope.

All Growed Up: Another EF impulse purchase, but partly because Reilly Qyote is a designer I've had really lovely interactions with and respect a lot. I hacked their game Cast Away into a Subnautica-themed survival crafting RPG. Kids playing as grown-ups seemed cute, so I wanted to check it out.

Heroes of Cerulea: I stumbled on this by accident back when I had some extra cash to spend, and it was 100% up my alley. The original Legend of Zelda is such a formative game for me that the nostalgia alone made me pick it up. It uses D4 and the pixel art throughout is impeccable. It feels a lot like skimming the manual of the original NES and SNES titles.

Details of Our Escape: Possible Worlds Games is one of those design outfits that's gotten the benefit of the doubt from me, so I had to pick this one up. Weird, artistic, and a neat backstory: It started asart pieces swapped by the artists, and later attached to a game by Tyler Crumrine. I think it's got heist energy, but I'm not sure so I'm curious to find out!

GoGoGolf!: An impulse add-on for the Details of Our Escape campaign, which looks like it's got that weird energy of some recent multiplayer golf games. I'm sold, and I'm checking it out.

Secutors of the Soundstage Sphere (for Troika!): This was a freebie for the recent EF sale, so I grabbed it. It's not really in my usual interests, but Free.99 is a great price!

Two Summers & Other Summers: I like games about people growing up, I'm realizing about myself. On a personal level, the idea that people can become different people, but remain the same intrigues me. Two Summers is about that, and I think Other Summers makes it weirder. So, excited to dive in.

[blueiscoool]

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft

Five things you probably didn’t know about the biggest art heist in history

Most art galleries and museums are famous for the art they contain. London’s National Gallery has Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”; “The Starry Night” meanwhile, is held at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, in good company alongside Salvador Dalì’s melting clocks, Andy Warhol’s soup cans and Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, however, is now more famous for the artwork that is not there, or at least, that is no longer there.

On March 18 1990 the museum fell prey to history’s biggest art heist. Thirteen works of art estimated to be worth over half a billion dollars — including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer — were stolen in the middle of the night, while the two security guards sat in the basement bound in duct tape.

The robbery is a treasure trove of surprising facts and unexpected plot twists. Here are five things that make the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and its famous theft, so interesting.

The woman behind the building:

Isabella Stewart Gardner, the museum’s founder and namesake, is a fascinating character. The daughter and eventual widow of two successful businessmen, Gardner was a philanthropist and art collector who built the museum to house her stash.

“When she opened the museum in 1903 she mandated that it be free of charge, to gain the appreciation and the attendance of all of Boston,” Stephan Kurkjian, author of “Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist”, said in the programme. “Her museum, at that point in time, was the largest collection of art by a private individual in America.”

Gardner also had links to the fledgling campaign for women’s political rights. The museum displays the photographs and letters of her friend Julia Ward Howe, an organizer of two US suffrage societies, and a print of Ethel Smyth, a composer and close friend of the English Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

Gardner met Smyth through their mutual friend, the painter John Singer Sargent, whose portrait of Gardener raised eyebrows for the low-cut neckline he gave her.

Gardner seemed to enjoy flirting with scandal and gossip: she once arrived at a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance in a hat band emblazoned with the name of her favorite baseball team, Red Sox, and an illustration in a January 1897 edition of the Boston Globe showed her apparently taking one of Boston Zoo’s lions for a walk.

Somewhat ironically, when the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, Gardner told her museum guards that, if they saw anyone trying to rob them, they should shoot to kill.

The art not taken:

The thieves’ loot is estimated to be worth over half a billion dollars. However, they left the building’s most expensive artifact: “The Rape of Europa” by Titian, which Gardner bought from a London art gallery in 1896, then a record price for an old master painting.

Why commit history’s greatest art heist and leave without the priciest piece in the museum? Well, size may have played a role. The largest artwork taken was Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” famous for being Rembrandt’s only seascape and measures roughly 5x4 feet. “The Rape of Europa,” meanwhile, is larger, at nearly 6x7 feet.

The Napoleon factor:

Around 2005, the investigation into the stolen artworks took a detour to the French island of Corsica in the Meditteranean Sea. Two Frenchmen with alleged ties to the Corsican mob were trying to sell two paintings: a Rembrandt and a Vermeer. Former FBI Special Agent Bob Wittman was involved in a sting to try and buy them — but the operation eventually fell apart when the men were arrested for selling art taken from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice instead.

Why would “Corsican mobsters,” as correspondent Randi Kaye described them in the programme, be interested in robbing a Boston art museum? The answer could lie in the Bronze Eagle Finial, the 10-inch ornament stolen from the top of a Napoleonic flag during the heist.

“It was sort of an odd choice for the thieves to take (the Finial),” Kaye said, “but it turns out that Corsica is essentially the homeland of Napoleon.” The French emperor was born on the island in 1769, and a national museum is now housed in his former family home.

“It is a very compelling notion,” Kelly Horan, Deputy Editor of the Boston Globe, said in the programme, “that a Corsican band of gangsters might have tried to steal back their flag and pull off the entire rest of the heist in the process.”

A rock’n’roll suspect:

March 18 1990 was not the first time a Rembrandt had been stolen from a Boston museum. In 1975, career criminal and art thief Myles Connor walked into Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and walked out with a Rembrandt tucked into his oversized coat pocket. He was the FBI’s first suspect in the Gardner case, however the walls of federal prison — where he was incarcerated on drugs charges — gave him a pretty solid alibi.

When he wasn’t lifting famous artworks from their displays, Connor was a musician. It was through gigging that he met Al Dotoli, who worked with stars including Frank Sinatra and Liza Minelli.

In 1976 Connor was jailed for a separate art theft committed in Maine. Hoping to use his stolen Rembrandt to leverage a lesser sentence, he needed Dotoli — who was on tour with Dionne Warwick — to turn the painting in to the authorities on his behalf.

An invisible thief?

One of the stolen artworks, Édouard Manet’s “Chez Tortoni,” was taken from the museum’s Blue Room on the first floor. The painting stands out for two reasons, the first being its frame. The thieves left almost all of the frames behind, cutting some out of the front.

“To even leave remnants of the painting(s) behind was savage,” Horan said. “In my mind, it’s sort of like slashing someone’s throat.”

The “Chez Tortoni” frame was unusual for where it was left, though: not in the room it was stolen from, but in the chair of the security office downstairs. Even more remarkable, not a single motion detector was set off in the Blue Room. Bar investigating the possibility of ghost robbers, investigators wondered if this pointed to the plot being an inside job.

“At the FBI we found that about 89% of museum institutional heists are inside jobs,” Wittman said. “That’s how these things get stolen.”

By Caitlin Chatterton.

[switch842]

Has anyone done a deep dive/meta/analysis/whatever as to how/why Armand and Louis have Rembrandt's Christ in the Storm on the Season of Galilea in their dining room?

I'm always fascinated when this piece of art shows up in media because it says soooo much about the person who has it in their possession but also brings up soooo many questions.

(It also recently showed up at the end of Season 5 of Cobra Kai when Mike Barnes took the painting from Terry Silver's house as repayment for Terry burning down his furniture store.)

For those who don't know, this Rembrandt was one of 13 artworks stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. So, does this mean Armand and/or Louis were involved in the heist? Do they have it simply because they know people on the Black Market? The whole heist is so interesting because, to this day, none of the works have been recovered. There are no suspects. The pieces that were stolen seem so random, some virtually worthless in the grand scheme of things. There is a 4-part mini-series on Netflix called This is a Robbery that takes a deep dive into this whole thing.

Anywho, I'm just interested in any theories that people might have on this little plot point.

[liminalmemories21]

hi!!! i’m absolutely in love with your knave-verse series, and i fall more in love every time i reread it. i just recently moved to boston (hence the anon ask), and some of the first things i did were visit both the gardner museum and the mfa and they’re incredible!! the mfa is beautiful and i love the variety of their artworks (and their rotating exhibits! i went just in time to catch the end of the japanese graphic design exhibit and i loved it!), but the gardner is a masterpiece. i love how much it feels like the personal collection it is and i love the almost-clutter of some of the rooms and i love the atmosphere of the whole place. i also got to see their summer rotating exhibit, which was on christopher street: transgender portraits, and i cried in the exhibit hall.

ANYWAY. what i actually wanted to talk about is. not any of that.

i just started reading michael finkel’s the art thief, about stéphane breitwieser, and i’m so curious as to what knave-verse tk thinks of him. there’s a couple passages in particular that have caught my eye as things i think tk would have an opinion on, and i’m only on chapter 3:

A violent, late-night heist is an insult to Breitwieser’s notion that stealing artwork should be a daytime affair of refined stealth in which no one so much as senses fear.

Breitwieser’s sole motivation for stealing, he insists, is to surround himself with beauty, to gorge on it. Very few art thieves have ever cited aesthetics as an incentive, but Breitwieser has emphasized this repeatedly…He takes only works that stir him emotionally, and seldom the most valuable piece in a place. He feels no remorse when he steals because museums, in his deviant view, are really just prisons for art. They’re often crowded and noisy, with limited visiting hours and uncomfortable seats, offering no calm place to reflect or recline.

Instead of an art thief, Breitwieser prefers to be thought of as an art collector with an unorthodox acquisition style. Or, if you will, he’d like to be called an art liberator.

the second quote in particular, especially the comment about museums being prisons, feels like something tk would have thoughts about, considering both his own unique code of thievery ethics and the fact that he now works in a museum himself, but all three of those quotes got my attention when i read them. finkel does mention that breitwieser “despised” the gardner theft because the thieves, in a way, destroyed the paintings by cutting them out of their frames instead of removing them neatly, which i do think tk would agree with him on, but we already know how tk feels about the gardner theft so that’s not surprising.

i’ve always loved museums, but i didn’t have any real appreciation for art for a long time. i started building that appreciation before i read your knave-verse, but the way that tk talks about art makes me look at things in a completely different way. you’ve also introduced me to so many artists i didn’t know anything about before! i’m still partial to sargent, but i’ve definitely expanded my horizons a lot in the last year or two and it’s incredible!! thank you so much for writing this series!! so seriously it has changed me and the way i look at art and the world and i keep coming back to it over and over again because i love it so much

oh, holy shit, this is amazing. Thank you so much.

I have so many things to say.

1 - Yes! Yes! the Gardner is astonishing, I love it so much. One of my favorite museums in the world. I'm so glad you went and loved it too.

2 - If you have access to a car - Newport, RI is a good day trip from Boston (the Breakers alone is worth the trip) - and the American Illustration Museum there has a huge collection of Leyendeckers. I need to go back. I need more time not devoted to being at work.

3 - I have not read The Art Thief, but it's on my list now, it sounds fascinating.

I think TK would appreciate the style and elan of refined stealth - that is extremely his vibe. (the fact that they cut the Gardner paintings out of their frames is physically painful to think about - although who pulled off the Gardner theft is one of my first questions in the afterlife).

But, TK would vehemently disagree with Breitwieser's characterization of museums as prisons of art. Look, there are lots of ethical concerns about museums - but they also have the potential to show people things they would never have the chance to see. Art isn't/shouldn't be locked away where only the privileged few can see it - it belongs to everyone.

4 - TK's taste in art is extremely my taste in art (shocking, right?) - but writing this has made me research a lot of art I would never otherwise have seen (especially in Austin - I now really want to go to Austin for the art, also google is 90% convinced I'm moving there).

And just, in conclusion - thank you so much for taking the time to say this, because it means a lot that something that started because I'd been watching White Collar and Lonestar and had a weird 'huh, what if?' moment, turned into something that has actually impacted the way you look at art, and the way that you feel like it can belong to you. That's amazing. I am so floored - in a good way - by that. Thank you.

[clonerightsagenda]

Reading another of the Chasing Vermeer books and started getting increasingly suspicious about the art heist they were describing and yup, the author took the Isabella Stewart Gardner heist and moved it to Chicago. Gardner's name got changed, but all the works of art are the same. Possibly the name change is because the story seems to be heading in a 'her ghost is still there' angle and it would be reasonable for the author not to want to make a real person's ghost a character but still this kind of feels like stolen valor on Boston's behalf.

[theoutcastrogue]

Is Stealing a Work of Art Ever Excusable? One Master Thief Claims Yes The world’s greatest living art thief is likely a 52-year-old Frenchman named Stéphane Breitwieser, who has stolen from some 200 museums, taking art worth an estimated total of $2 billion. While working on a book about him, I interviewed Breitwieser extensively, during which he discussed the details of dozens of his heists—and also expressed the brazen belief that his art crimes should be considered forgivable. But only his crimes. Breitwieser said that he didn’t even like being called an art thief, because all other art thieves seemed to be nothing more than art-hating thugs. This includes the most accomplished ones, like the two men who robbed Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on the night of St. Patrick’s Day, 1990. The Gardner thieves assaulted the pair of overnight guards, bound the guards’ eyes and mouths with duct tape, and handcuffed them to pipes in the basement. Then the Gardner robbers yanked down a magnificent Rembrandt seascape, and one of the men stuck a knife in it. Breitwieser can hardly bring himself to imagine it—the blade ripping along the edge of the work, paint flakes spraying, canvas threads ripping, until the masterpiece, released from its stretcher and frame, curled up as if in death throes. The thieves, whose $500 million crime remains unsolved, then moved on to another Rembrandt and did it again. “They’re barbarians,” said Breitwieser. Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, who served as lookout on most of his thefts, never resorted to violence, or so much as the threat of violence. They stole from museums only during opening hours, using subtle diversionary tactics that permitted Breitwieser to make things disappear, magician-like, from walls or display cases, while carefully avoiding security cameras and alarm systems. The couple escaped by strolling out a museum’s front door, the artwork usually stashed beneath Breitwieser’s overcoat.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

I squealed with delight when I saw that Vermeer painting. This is a delightful Easter egg for a museum person like me.

This Vermeer, titled “The Concert,” really was stolen - but not from the Louvre. It was one of 13 works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Boston, Massachusetts in 1990 in one of the most famous art heists. It has never been found, nor has the crime ever been solved.