[HN Gopher] Empty Frames and Other Oddities from the Unsolved Ga...
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Empty Frames and Other Oddities from the Unsolved Gardner Museum
Heist
Author : Caiero
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-03-18 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| martinclayton wrote:
| https://archive.is/WWhat
| tithe wrote:
| Classic slug for this story.
| tivert wrote:
| > including a rare Vermeer
|
| What does this mean? Wasn't Vermeer a painter, and therefore all
| of his works were one of a kind (unless he painted copies)?
| johnnyo wrote:
| I dont know about the details of this particular painting, but
| Rarity here could refer to something like the type of paint
| used, the size, or even the subject matter or time period.
| yostrovs wrote:
| And he only painted about 35 works it seems, which basically
| means all are rare.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Johanne...
| sandspar wrote:
| Vermeer is the "shiny Pokemon card" of painters. Some museum
| recently announced they'd gathered a temporary collection of
| 20-odd Vermeers. Tickets for the show were sold out within
| minutes - a year ahead of time. Normally if you wanted to
| assemble a "complete collection" of Vermeers you've seen,
| you'd have to travel to like 10 different countries. Guys
| online talking about having no hesitation paying for a ten
| hour flight and two-day vacation for the sole reason of
| seeing this exhibit.
| maratc wrote:
| > Some museum recently announced they'd gathered a
| temporary collection of 20-odd Vermeers.
|
| That would be Rijks in 2023[0], they had 28 Vermeers on
| display, tickets sold out within two months, half a year
| ahead of time.
|
| [0] https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-
| on/exhibitions/vermeer
| suchire wrote:
| Vermeer made only low dozens of paintings as opposed to, say,
| Monet, who made thousands, so likely they just mean something
| like "including one of Vermeer's paintings, which are rare"
| pvg wrote:
| It's just the opposite of a well-done Vermeer.
| gumby wrote:
| Those are the ones people pour ketchup on, I understand, a
| scandalous activity.
| toast0 wrote:
| You sound like a fun person to stop to ask if you have any
| dijon mustard.
| gumby wrote:
| Many of the "majors" had a factory in which the "master" or
| headline figure might sketch out a painting, have it filled out
| by someone else, and then perhaps be finished off by the
| master. Sometimes multiple versions of the same painting were
| produced.
|
| The Vermeers and Van Goughs didn't have all that infrastructure
| (and Vermeer painted little, or at least little survives)
| tikhonj wrote:
| I'd read this as "rare _because_ it is a Vermeer _" rather than
| "rare _for* a Vermeer".
| pradn wrote:
| There's only ~34 paintings firmly attributed to Vermeer, and -
| fun fact - 11 of them are on 5th Avenue in New York (between
| The Met and The Frick).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Johannes_...
| maratc wrote:
| 5 + 3 = 8 are supposed to be on the Fifth, with additional 4
| in Washington, DC, unless there's some exhibition going on
| currently that I'm unaware of.
| pradn wrote:
| Oops, you're right - I counted w/ Ctrl-F and that's not
| accurate with references.
| owlninja wrote:
| > But other items that were stolen were not nearly of the same
| caliber: a nondescript Chinese metal vase; a fairly ordinary
| bronze eagle from atop a flagpole; and five minor sketches by
| Degas. The thieves walked past paintings and jade figurines worth
| millions, including a drawing by Michelangelo, yet they spent
| some of their 81 minutes inside fussing to free the vase from a
| tricky locking mechanism.
|
| Would love to find this out. Were the more expensive pieces under
| increased security?
| mikebonnell wrote:
| No, they weren't under extra security. The thieves seemed to
| not understand or not care about the value of what they stole
| versus what they left behind.
| eschneider wrote:
| The Degas sketches were very nice and extremely accessible. I
| mean, I'd have left with them. They're the sort of things you
| could hang around the house and enjoy and folks wouldn't
| immediately finger you for an art heist. Perfect, really.
| bombcar wrote:
| That may indicate it was more of a crime of happenstance
| which are the hardest to track down, because there's no
| planning, no trail, and with two people there might not even
| be anyone left alive.
| sandspar wrote:
| I like the explanation that the thieves were time travelers
| from the future, and they knew that these specific items - and
| no others - were the difference between future victory and
| defeat.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| someone just watched the recent Indiana Jones movie...
| ilamont wrote:
| I lived in Boston in 1990. A friend of a friend worked as a
| security guard at the Gardner and took the night off that night
| (either to party or perform in his band) and someone else took
| his place. My friend said the FBI was "up his ass" as a result to
| determine if he was part of the caper.
|
| Regardless, everyone thought it was something related to the New
| England mob, which was still powerful at the time. But nobody
| squealed with verifiable information, which seems strange
| considering the feds and state police were actively targeting the
| mafia (thanks to help from Whitey Bulger and his pals in the FBI)
| and knowledge of the heist would have been an opportunity to
| lessen law enforcement pressure and/or reduced sentences during
| subsequent prosecutions.
| paulpauper wrote:
| organized crime seems like the most likely culprit . you would
| need a connection of some sort to have any hope of reselling
| it, and also to coordinate the whole thing .
| twright wrote:
| As the article notes, what is remarkable about the Gardner Museum
| thefts is the quantity of items stolen _and_ that none of them
| have turned up. A similar crime is de Kooning's Woman-Ochre in
| 1985. Its theft and recovery in 2017 is an interesting story[1].
| Either someone is holding these artworks privately in some remote
| area and it's an incredibly well kept family secret or, in my
| sole opinion, the works have been destroyed or damaged beyond
| recovery i.e. disposed into the Boston Harbor.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman-Ochre#Theft
| alsetmusic wrote:
| That was absolutely fascinating to read. Thanks for sharing.
| What an interesting story.
|
| Neighbors wondered how they could afford so much travel. I also
| wondered how they had a home on 20 acres on public salaries.
| Gotta wonder if they stole other art and sold it on the black
| market.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _In the pre-dawn hours of March 18, 1990, following a festive St.
| Patrick's Day in Boston, two men dressed as police officers
| walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and walked off
| with an estimated $500 million in art treasures. Despite efforts
| by the local police, federal agents, amateur sleuths and not a
| few journalists, no one has found any of the 13 works lost in the
| largest art theft in history, including a rare Vermeer and three
| precious Rembrandts._
|
| The art hasn't resurfaced probably because it was never sold.
| "biggest art height" is based on some arbitrary valuations for a
| totally illiquid market. It could have just been $5 billion or
| $50 million . Reselling stolen art is close to
| impossible...pennies on the dollar is optimistic. Also if anyone
| did come forward with the artwork, they would immediately be
| deemed a suspect (I dunno how the statute of limitations would
| come into play here).
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The tying up of the guard constitutes kidnapping under New York
| law, and the fact that they did so pursuant to another felony
| (grand theft) means that there is no statute of limitations on
| this case. Everything else about the case is past the statute
| of limitations, though.
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(page generated 2024-03-18 23:01 UTC)