5 Infamous Museum Heists
Museum heists are often depicted as high-stakes adventures in movies and novels — a fictional counterpart to the dramatic real-life robberies that have been taking place for centuries. While they vary in scale (and success), museum heists have a few core elements in common: audacity, craftsmanship, and unabashed guile. While suspects are sometimes caught and stolen goods are occasionally recovered, the details of these crimes often remain a mystery. From the theft of the “Mona Lisa” in 1911, which catapulted a once-relatively obscure painting to global fame, to the enigmatic Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist of 1990, when masterpieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt vanished, here are some of the most infamous museum heists in history.
The Theft of the “Mona Lisa”
The theft of the “Mona Lisa” has been called the greatest art theft of the 20th century, but it was a rather rudimentary operation. On the morning of August 21, 1911, the now-famous Leonardo da Vinci painting was carried out of the Louvre in Paris, France, by three Italian handymen who had covered it in a blanket. The men — one of whom, Vincenzo Peruggia, was a former museum employee — are believed to have hidden in a supply closet overnight before removing the painting, its frame, and its protective glass case off the wall while the museum was closed that Monday morning.
At first, no one even noticed the painting was gone; it wasn’t until 28 hours later that the bare spot on the wall was finally acknowledged. Before it went missing, the “Mona Lisa” — now considered the most famous painting in the world — was largely unknown outside the art world. After the heist, images of the Renaissance masterpiece were plastered on newspapers around the world, cementing it as the world-famous piece it is today. The painting remained missing for two years as the investigation went awry; at one point, artist Pablo Picasso was even considered a suspect. In 1913, Peruggia finally attempted to sell the portrait, triggering an arrest and a stint in jail. The “Mona Lisa” was finally recovered in Florence and returned to the Louvre, where it still hangs today.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist
It ranks among the most audacious art thefts in history — and it still remains unsolved. In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, two people disguised as police officers convinced the security guards at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to let them inside. The thieves proceeded to subdue the unsuspecting guards and, leaving them handcuffed to pipes in the building’s basement, spent 81 minutes brazenly stealing 13 works of art. Priceless pieces by Rembrandt van Rijn and Édouard Manet were among the stolen goods, as was Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert,” considered the most expensive missing work of art today.
In the aftermath, empty frames hung on the museum walls, as the artworks they housed were cut out and removed during the heist. Despite investigators identifying several probable culprits over the years, and a recent Netflix series and investigative podcast about the heist, as well as new clues deepening the possible ties to organized crime, the Gardner heist remains unsolved, and there’s a $10 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolen pieces. The empty frames still hang on the walls today.
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The American Museum of Natural History Gem Heist
In 1964, Jack Roland Murphy — better known as “Murf the Surf” — along with his accomplices Allan Kuhn and Roger Clark, orchestrated a burglary at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Weeks before the crime, the three well-dressed men made their way from Miami to a Manhattan penthouse, where they were living large and practicing stealing from wealthy hotel bar patrons in the process. Soon, they turned their attention to the jewels in the nearby museum. They spent time inside the building to learn the layout and plan their eventual break-in.
On the night of October 29, the three men made their way to the museum. Murphy and Kuhn climbed a fire escape before breaking into the unlocked fourth-floor windows, while Clark served as a lookout below. Luckily for them, the gems’ display cases didn’t even have a working alarm system, enabling the thieves to easily make off with the Star of India (a 563-carat sapphire), the rare Eagle Diamond, the 100.32-carat DeLong Star Ruby, and handfuls of other precious gems totaling a modern-day value of about $3 million. The crime was hardly professional; they left a careless trail, and within days they were found and arrested, many of the gems recovered. Murphy appeared nonchalant in the press, smoking a cigar and claiming the arrest had thrown a wrench into his plans to spend the winter surfing. The public ate it up, turning them into unlikely folk heroes. Eventually, the trio served a few years each behind bars.
The Dresden Green Vault Burglary
One of the most high-profile heists in recent history was the 2019 Green Vault burglary. Located in Dresden, Germany, the museum (known locally as the Grünes Gewölbe) is known for having one of Europe’s largest collections of precious historical treasures, including jewelry, gemstones, and other artifacts that showcase the opulence of the Baroque era’s Saxon kings. In the early hours of November 25, 2019, thieves began their break-in by starting a fire nearby, which destroyed an electrical box and caused the street lights around the museum to go dark. They then broke the museum’s security panel and smashed through a window, making their way to the priceless jewelry displays; within minutes they had made off with a trove of irreplaceable items valued at about $128 million. The suspects then started another fire — this time to a car in a nearby parking garage — before jumping in their own getaway car and fleeing to Berlin.
After an extensive investigation, raids were carried out a year later in Berlin and the first of the suspects was apprehended. In the end, five men, all from the same prominent crime family, admitted their involvement in the heist; one even apologized and said he’d made a mistake. In early 2023, they were convicted and given prison time ranging from four years and four months to six years and three months. Despite extensive efforts to recover the stolen artifacts, many of them still remain missing.
The “Skylight Caper”
In the early morning hours of September 4, 1972, a man wearing a ski mask and spiked climbing shoes scaled a tree to get to the roof of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. He lowered a ladder to his two awaiting accomplices, and then, using a rope, the trio rappelled into the building through an unsecured skylight. Once inside, they tied up the security guards and started their spree, stealing 18 paintings (including a rare Rembrandt landscape) and 39 other artifacts valuing $2 million in 1972 (about $15 million today).
The men were believed to have left in haste, on foot, after accidentally tripping an alarm. (Another Rembrandt, as well as paintings by Pablo Picasso, El Greco, and more, were left behind on the floor.) Within a few days of the heist, the museum was contacted and told where to find one of the stolen items near a public pay phone. One month later, an envelope with photos of the stolen paintings and a ransom request for $500,000 arrived at the museum; it was not a successful attempt, but one of the paintings was returned in good faith. A year later, there was another ransom attempt from the supposed capers, but it amounted to nothing and the trail went cold. In the 1990s, new suspects and leads were pursued, but the case remains unsolved.
