Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist 29 Years, As Bobby "The Cook" Gentile Survives The Clenched Fist Of The FBI, For Now !!

Man linked to largest art heist in history freed from prison

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A reputed Connecticut mobster who federal authorities believe is the last surviving person of interest in the largest art heist in history criticized government officials Monday as he adjusted to being back home after finishing a four-year prison sentence for weapons crimes.

Robert Gentile, 82, also maintained he knows nothing about the unsolved theft of $500 million worth of art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. He was released from federal custody in the unrelated weapons case Friday.

"I had nothing to do with the paintings. It's a big joke," Gentile said in a phone interview from his Manchester home.

He also blamed federal prison officials for worsening health problems that have left him unable to get around except in a wheelchair, and he criticized law enforcement officials for seizing his money and damaging his home during a raid in the weapons case.

"I'm all crippled up. They had me in a bed for a year chained up," he said. "I should have never been in jail. It's a joke."

Officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons said they were reviewing Gentile's comments but had no immediate response Monday. An FBI spokesman in New Haven declined to comment.
Update:
Federal prison officials say there is no evidence to support mistreatment allegations made by a reputed Connecticut mobster who authorities believe is the last surviving person of interest in the largest art heist in history.
The federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement Monday that it could find no support for the allegations.

"Mr. Gentile went to prison, he's been released, the investigation goes on. We're not sitting around hoping he tells us what he may or may not know." Anthony Amore Director of Security Gardner Museum

The art heist took place March 18, 1990, when two men masquerading as Boston police officers got into the museum by telling a security guard they were responding to a report of a disturbance, according to authorities. The guard and a co-worker were handcuffed and locked in the basement while the thieves made off with the art.

The missing pieces include Rembrandt's only known seascape, "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee," and Vermeer's "The Concert," one of fewer than 40 known paintings by the 17th-century Dutch painter.

The FBI told The Associated Press in 2015 that two suspects — both Boston criminals with ties to organized crime — were deceased.
Investigators believe the paintings moved through mob circles to Connecticut and Philadelphia, where the trail went cold, officials have said.
Prosecutors have said another gangster's widow claimed her husband gave Gentile two of the paintings. Authorities also have said that Gentile talked about the stolen paintings with fellow prisoners and once told an undercover FBI agent he had access to two of the paintings and could negotiate the sale of each for $500,000.

But Gentile, who will be on federally supervised release for the next three years, has publicly insisted he knows nothing about the theft or where the paintings are.

Federal agents have searched Gentile's home three times, including with ground-penetrating radar, in what Gentile's lawyer, A. Ryan McGuigan, believes were efforts to find the paintings and other evidence about the heist.

The weapons charges were filed after authorities found several firearms at Gentile's home in 2016, which he was prohibited from possessing as a previously convicted felon.
Gentile was sentenced to more than two years in prison in 2013 for illegally selling prescription drugs and possessing guns, silencers and ammunition. In that case, prosecutors said federal agents found in Gentile's home a handwritten list of the stolen paintings and their estimated worth, along with a newspaper article about the museum heist a day after it happened.

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Heist 2019, Anthony Amore Seeking Inspiration

An office focused on what’s missing

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

Since Anthony Amore took over as the Gardner’s security director in 2005, he has worked tirelessly to recover the masterworks.

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2019/03/12/office-focused-what-missing/AAZeqTF3M5DLvFZwU32tSL/story.html

By Shelley Murphy Globe Staff  March 12, 2019

Images of some of the world’s most coveted masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer adorn the walls of a cramped office in Boston’s Fenway. A name plate from the frame that held Manet’s “Chez Tortoni” is propped above a keyboard on the desk.

They are a source of inspiration and heartache for Anthony Amore, security director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. He has spent countless hours in this small room on the fourth floor of the historic palace, searching for clues in an agonizing quest to recover treasures stolen years before he was hired to protect the collection.

“When you are looking for something for a long time and it seems like an impossible task, you need inspiration,” says 52-year-old Amore, whose office is filled with reminders of the $500 million worth of artwork stolen 29 years ago.

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

Boston, MA., 02/19/2019, Anthony Amore is the security director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in his office, which reflects his all-consuming quest to recover the masterpieces stolen decades ago. His office has reporductions of the the lost artwork, including a photograph of the painting The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt. Globe staff/Suzanne Kreiter

A high-resolution color photograph of Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” mounted on foam board hangs over Amore’s desk. At 4 feet by 3 feet, it dominates the room, but is considerably smaller than the original 5-foot-by-4-foot seascape that was pulled from its frame by the thieves.

The office walls are covered with smaller images of some of the missing art. Brackets that once held the stolen “Chez Tortoni” in its frame are now in a plastic bag on Amore’s desk.

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

The hardware that held the painting “Chez Tortoni” by Manet to the wall.

Hear from Gardener Museum security director Anthony Amore on ‘Last Seen’

Two thieves dressed as police officers were buzzed into the museum in the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, and tied up two guards on duty. In addition to Rembrandt and Vermeer paintings, they got away with works by Manet, Flinck, and Degas, as well as a bronze eagle finial from atop a Napoleonic flag and a Chinese beaker, or “Ku.”
The window in Amore’s office overlooks Palace Road, where the thieves parked and were let in at the museum’s side door.

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

From his office window, Anthony Amore can see where the theives parked their car the night of the heist.

Scratches made by the culprits are still visible on a square metal plate resting on a file cabinet in Amore’s office. The stolen Ku had been mounted on the plate.

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None of the artwork has been recovered, despite a $10 million reward offered by the museum and promises of immunity for those who have the stolen treasures.
There also are items in Amore’s office that reflect his other passions: family, politics, history, and literature. The Swampscott Republican — who made an unsuccessful run last year for secretary of state — has a framed photograph on the wall of father and son former presidents, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
There is also a postcard depicting Paul Revere, and a copy of President George Washington’s farewell address, which Amore explains by noting, “I’m an aficionado of the American Revolution. That’s my thing.”
Photographs of his two daughters, Alessandra and Gabriela, and some of their school artwork are also on display. A collection of books — including some written by Amore — fill a book case. Many are about art and, of course, art theft.
Amore says his office captures his interests, but “more than anything you can see the amount of stuff related to the theft is overwhelming. And that’s really what the theft is: overwhelming.”

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

In Anthony Amore’s office is his daughter's sketch of a detective with a magnifying glass hunting for the stolen art.

Even his daughter Gabriela’s sketch, drawn in 2008 when she was 11, focuses on her father’s unrelenting search. It depicts a girl with a pony tail, standing in front of an empty frame and peering into a magnifying glass. She’s saying, “Now I will help my dad find stolen paintings from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and sleep in my dads office for the night.”

‘When you are looking for something for a long time and it seems like an impossible task, you need inspiration.’

Amore says he never let anyone sleep in his office, but he has solicited all the help he can get in his effort to recover the artwork.
Since Amore took over as security director at the museum in 2005, he has worked tirelessly alongside FBI agents and federal prosecutors to recover the masterworks. He’s created a massive database with details of every tip chased over the last 29 years.
Three file cabinets in his office are jammed with folders labeled with names of suspects and “people of interest,” an assortment of gangsters, petty criminals, and art thieves.
In 2012, the museum opened a new wing and Amore was moved to a spacious, modern office there. But, the original building, built by Mrs. Gardner and opened to the public in 1903 drew him back.
He said he feels more comfortable in the 6-foot-by-15-foot office, even though it’s often hot and gets noisy when air blows through a ceiling vent. It’s located above the galleries that he’s charged with protecting.
“The collection is here,” Amore says of his location. “Two floors below me is the empty ‘Storm on the Sea of Galilee’ frame. This is where I should be.”
His office is on the same floor where Gardner lived until her death in 1924. Her living quarters were converted to office space, for use by the museum’s director, in the late 1980s. Amore’s office was previously a maid’s bedroom.

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

A framed photos of Isabella and Jack Gardner in Anthony Amore’s office.

Amore keeps a photo of Gardner and her husband, Jack, who died before the museum was opened, framed on his office wall. It’s the first thing he sees when he opens the door — another source of inspiration to keep pushing to reclaim the art that belongs in the museum she left in her will “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever.”
In 1942, 95 paintings and nine stained glass works — including works by Titian, Rembrandt, Cranach, Zorn, Vermeer, and Whistler — were removed from the Gardner museum and sent by armored truck to an estate in Center Harbor, N.H., for safekeeping during World War II, according to the museum archives.
The museum’s photographer, Joseph Brenton Pratt, took photographs of the paintings, which were hung in their place until the originals were returned in 1944.
Today, a copy of Pratt’s black and white photograph of Vermeer’s “The Concert” is framed and mounted on Amore’s office wall. Amore says it was a gift from the late photographer’s son, Christopher, providing added inspiration to fuel his hunt for the stolen original.
The investigation is daunting, but Amore says he remains hopeful that one day the stolen masterpieces will be back on the museum’s walls. He says a veteran State Police detective speculated the key to the mystery is in the old files.
Amore points to his cabinet stuffed with folders and says, “So the answer is in here.”

Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

Anthony Amore, in his office at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. To his left is “Chez Tortoni” by Édouard Manet.

Shelley Murphy can be reached at shmurphy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shelleymurph.

Stolen Art Watch, Empty Frames Season Two Finale

New episode! In our season 2 finale we chat with our pal the Muddy River Fact Checker and get into some Gardner Heist Minutia. Subscribe now at http://StitcherPremium.com ! #podcast #truecrime #gardnerheist #gardnermuseum #art #artheist #artcrime

Stolen Art Watch, Dr No, Dr Maybe, Dr Yes, Empty Frames January 2019

New episode! We talk to Paul Turbo Hendry about the idea of a Dr. No, a rich person who buys stolen artwork for their personal collection.
Do they exist? Turbo has a few examples.
Subscribe at http://Stitcherpremium.com  and get a free month with code FRAMES.
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/audioboom/empty-frames/e/57984608?autoplay=true&refid=asi_twtr

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Dr No, Hans Heinrich "Heini" Thyssen-Bornemisz’s Stolen & Looted Art Collection

http://universe.byu.edu/index.php/2012/01/10/police-beat-9/

Jan. 5 – Somewhere between 1970-1985, a piece of art valued at $218,000 was stolen from BYU campus. After being stolen the “Silver Chalice” was sold between a number of different art dealers before finally landing in Switzerland with Count Thyssen-Bornemisz’s collection. BYU negotiated with Thyssen-Bornemisz’s estate and the piece of art was returned to BYU.
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 The Camille Pissarro painting hanging in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Museum.



The Camille Pissarro painting hanging in the Berlin apartment of Lilly Cassirer, circa 1930.

Miami lawyer leads legal charge against Spain to return Pissarro painting looted by Nazis

Cassirer’s great grandson is fighting a legal battle with the Spanish museum to return the painting. - The Cassirer Family Trust, public domain

Gazing through the window of his Paris hotel room in 1897, influential Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro painted a dreamy street scene alive with suited men, horse-drawn carriages and bustling shops. More than a century later, the St. Honoré St., Afternoon, Effect of Rain now hangs as a signature piece in Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
But the oil-on-canvas masterpiece has a dark past: the Nazis strong-armed it away from Lilly Cassirer, whose prominent Jewish family owned an art gallery in Germany in the 1930s.
After years of legal battles, the Cassirer family — with help from prominent Miami lawyer Steve Zack — next week will finally get a chance to convince a federal judge to order Spain to return the priceless work of art. Monday’s trial in a Los Angeles federal court will be closely watched in the art world, and for those who have fought for decades to return art looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
For Zack, a former American Bar Association and Florida Bar president, the case has special resonance. He is Jewish. And Zack and his family were forced to flee Cuba by the island’s Communist authoritarian regime.

“This is important in different ways to many communities,” Zack said of the case. “Jewish and Cuban families suffered, from the Nazis and the Casto regime. When we took on this case, it had a significant meaning far beyond just one case.”

Tracking down Nazi-looted art has been a priority for world leaders, who this month celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Washington Principles, a treaty aimed at returning the pieces to their rightful owners.

Miami lawyer Stephen Zack

- Boies Schiller Flexner law firm

The Nazi regime stole an estimated 600,000 paintings before and during World War II, Stuart E. Eizenstat, a U.S. State Department adviser who helped establish the treaty, said at the conference earlier this month. He told the conference that at least 100,000 paintings remain unrecovered, according to the New York Times, and singled out five countries, including Spain, for resisting efforts to return art stolen by Hitler’s henchmen.

As U.S. deputy secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton administration, Eizenstat urged Spain to return the Cassirer family’s painting to no avail.
The odyssey of the Pissarro painting began in 1900, when his exclusive agent sold the work to the Cassirers, who owned a prominent gallery in Berlin. Lilly Cassirer inherited the piece in 1926, and displayed it her parlor. By 1939, as the Nazis were systematically destroying Jewish society and preparing to unleash their war machine on Europe, Cassirer was forced to sell them the painting for a paltry sum in exchange for safe passage out of Germany.
During the war, the Nazis sold the painting to an anonymous buyer. For decades, the Cassirers believed the painting was lost, until a family friend in 2000 spotted it at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum.
So what happened? The painting — today valued at at least $40 million — wound up in the hands of (Dr No) Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a member of the famous German industrialist family. Records show he had purchased the painting in 1976 from St. Louis collector Sydney Schoenberg through the Stephen Hahn Gallery in New York.
Spain later bought Thyssen-Bornemisza’s art collection for display at the government-run museum that bears his name. The baron died in 2002. For years after the painting was spotted, the Cassirer family repeatedly asked the museum to return the painting.

It was not until 2005 that Claude Cassirer, Lilly’s grandson, filed a federal lawsuit in Southern California. A trial judge dismissed the case five years later, a decision overturned in 2013 by a federal appeals court. Claude has since died, but his son, David Cassirer, is now the plaintiff, along with the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County.
“There is a widespread recognition by civilized nations that is important to restore looted art to the rightful owners. The Spanish government and the Spanish museum, in this respect, is contrary to international norms. And frankly, it’s reprehensible,” said lawyer David Boies , who also represents the family..

Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Musuem

cortesía Leonardo Boix

In an unusual court room scenario, the Los Angeles federal judge must rule under Spanish legal standards. Spain and the museum will argue that Thyssen-Bornemisza bought the masterpiece in good faith — that the baron never knew the painting was ripped off from the family by the Nazis.
“No evidence of bad faith can be found in the Baron’s ownership of the painting – during which time the painting was publicized and publicly exhibited in international tours between 1979 and 1986, and in the 1988 magazine Architectural Digest,” the museum’s legal team, headed by Thaddeus Stauber, wrote in court documents.
Stauber declined to comment before the trial.
The Cassirer family’s legal team must prove that museum was an encubrador — in Spanish law, an accessory to the theft of the art decades earlier.
They point out that Thyssen-Bornemisza was a sophisticated art buyer who employed a cadre of experts to examine works. When he bought the painting in New York, it still had a label identifying it as part of the Cassirer Gallery in Berlin. Within the art world, it was widely known that the Cassirer painting had been targeted by the Nazis.
“It was easy to find out this was looted,” Boies said.
In the years after the purchase, Thyssen-Bornemisza also fudged details of the purchase to try and hide that he knew the Pissarro was a stolen work of art, according to the lawyers.
The trial is before U.S. District Judge John Walter, and is expected to last at least three days.

David Cassirer is suing Spain’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum to recover a valuable Pisarro painting that was stolen by the Nazis in 1939, and later wound up hanging in the gallery.- Cassirer family.

Stolen Art Watch, Jeffrey Gundlach, Philanthropist, Renaissance Person, Can Bring Home The Gardner Art

The Gardner Art recovery needs to be taken out of the Govt/FBI and Gardner Museum's hands.
The private sector, in the shape of a Billionaire Philanthropist, needs to step in with a private reward offer structured with a:

Philanthropist Gardner Art Reward Price List
No conditions on reward payment
No scrutiny.

All done with media co-operation in public.
Banner headline the Philanthropist Gardner Art Reward Price List

Then the Billionaire Philanthropist can hand back the stolen Gardner art they recover, seek no Gardner Museum reward, and not reveal how they recovered the said stolen Gardner artworks.

Introducing Jeffrey Gundlach, the Billionaire Philanthropist, Renaissance Person whom I believe has the rescources and is best suited to bring home the stolen Gardner Art, with a private reward offer to counter the uncollectable Gardner Museum reward offer.

 https://buffalonews.com/2018/07/29/albright-knox-philanthropist-gundlach-plans-second-home-on-lincoln-parkway/

Not satisfied with just donating a record amount of money to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, philanthropist Jeffrey Gundlach now wants to live near it.

The billionaire investment manager, who owns a $15 million estate in the Pacific Palisades of Los Angeles, will use a 5,204-square-foot mansion at 76 Lincoln Parkway as his home when in town.
Gundlach bought the 0.41-acre property through Frostridge LLC in 2017 from the estate of Susan F. Surdam, paying $950,000, and he's making interior improvements.

The property is just a few blocks from the museum, but the founder of DoubleLine Capital won't always be there, said attorney Sean Hopkins. So now he's planning to carve out the rear 4,525-square-foot portion of the property into a new lot, on which he'll put up a two-story detached building with a three-car garage and a 1,120-square-foot caretaker's apartment.
Both the existing 2.5-story house in front, which dates to 1926, and the new house in the rear will be stucco.

Plans by architect David Sutton call for adding a new uncovered porch on the front facade of the existing house. The new balcony is designed to mimic the home's original terrace and courtyard. The property is in the Elmwood Village Historic District East.
If approved, construction by Omni-Craft Inc. – the Akron-based firm owned by Gundlach's older brother, Drew – would cost $250,000 and would last four months, according to an application to he Buffalo Planning Board, which will review the project July 30.
The project received three variances from the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Gundlach donated $42.5 million to the Albright-Knox in 2016 to anchor the museum's $100 million capital campaign, then added another $10 million commitment in 2017 when the museum increased its target to $155 million.

The Gardner Museum reward offer started out as a private reward offer from the auction houses Christies and Sotheby's so this would only be reverting to the original private Gardner art reward offer. See link: https://www.nytimes.com/.../auctioneers-underwrite-reward...

Jeffrey Gundlach recovered his own stolen art, see link below:
https://www.businessinsider.com/gundlachs-helped-the-fbi-2012-11?IR=T&fbclid=IwAR0RZoiDu1kxXvbyL4dwuqXywO6PmsnB3f7Akx9DZ7lWzRPQO7_zqj7Bifw

Gardner Art Heist, Last Seen Podcast Episode 9 Reveals Roadblock To Recovery Of The Gardner Art !!

Stolen Art Watch, Gardner Art Reward Price List Will Lead to Gardner Art Recovery

Gardner Art Reward Price List

Establish an itemized reward price list showing the amount that will be received for returning each of the stolen items, to accommodate the possibility that the 13 stolen Gardner artworks are no longer together.

Reward Total $10 million

Vermeer $5 million

Rembrandt Storm on the Sea $3 million

Rembrandt Lady and Gentleman in Black $1 million

Manet Chez Tortoni $500,000

After Rembrandt Obelisk painting $100,000

A bronze eagle finial
(c. 1813–1814) $100,000

Small Self-Portrait
by Rembrandt $50,000

An ancient Chinese Gu $50,000

La Sortie de Pesage

by Degas $ 50,000

Cortege aux Environs de Florence
by Degas $50,000

Three Mounted Jockeys
by Degas
(c. 1885–1888) $50,000

Program for an Artistic Soirée 1
by Degas
(1884) £25,000

Program for an Artistic Soirée 2
by Degas
(1884) ~$25,000

Stolen Art Watch, Kelly Horan Demands Gardner Art Recovery, Turbo Plan Provides Solution

Kelly Horan, host of Last Seen podcast about the Gardner Art Heist, reveals the tragic loss of the Gardner art can be compared to the tragic loss of the infant son of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

It is universally agreed that there is a desperate need to recover the Gardner art, however, until now no-one has offered practial solutions.

The Turbo Plan offers a solution going forward with the Gardner Art Reward Price List and Change .org petition:

https://www.change.org/p/let-s-bring-home-the-stolen-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-art-a-new-approach?recruiter=886928978&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition

Isabella Left This Art In Our Care — 

'We Need To Get Them Back'

---

When I was given the assignment to delve into the story behind the theft of 13 treasures from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — how did it happen, and why hasn’t it been solved — I knew that my charge would be a complicated one.

I had no idea.

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Working with the Globe and my WBUR colleagues on a podcast about the crime, I met mobsters and con men, wily defense lawyers and frustrated former agents. I bounced between Dorchester and Ireland, the Fenway and New York. I spent countless hours with the museum’s head of security, a man whose every waking moment — his voice, his face, his somber demeanor — is made heavy by his obsession with finding the stolen works.

I basked in the live-wire glow of Anne Hawley, the brilliant and elegant former museum director, who sized up the loss of the most valuable paintings with a few unfathomable questions: What if we could never listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony again, or hear Louis Armstrong, or see “Hamlet” performed? Such is the meaning of these missing Rembrandts, the Vermeer and the Manet.

But the most captivating person connected to the largest unsolved art heist in history, someone whose presence I’ve felt every day of this endeavor, is neither a suspect nor a detective. It’s Isabella Stewart Gardner herself.

The French have a term for the descriptive text left in place of art that has been stolen: fantôme. As in, phantom. As in, the ghost of art now gone. Mrs. Gardner knew loss, deep abiding loss, all too well. Which is what makes this robbery, this fantôme, all the more wrenching. To understand Mrs. Gardner, as she is still called at the museum, is to understand what was truly lost on that March night 28 years ago.

Mrs. Gardner was not an unsung presence in the Boston of the late 1800s. She was wealthy, insatiably curious and the life of every party. But I learned that before she was christened “one of the seven wonders of Boston,” before she was described as a “flamelike incarnation of vigor and life” in the thrilling portrait of her by the Swedish painter Anders Zorn, she was nearly done in by death.

Anders Zorn's portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner on display in the museum's Short Gallery. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Gardner lost her only child, a son she called Jackie, before he was 2 years old. It was the heartbreak of her life. In a photograph that I find harder to look at than any of the museum’s empty frames, Gardner stands behind her sitting baby, holding him up. Jackie looks straight ahead. Gardner smiles into the back of the boy’s downy head. You can practically see her inhaling his perfect baby scent.

In 1867, two years after their son’s death and on doctor’s orders, a wan and bereft Gardner boarded a steamer ship with her husband, John Lowell “Jack” Gardner. Destination: Northern Europe. Travel healed. Beauty redeemed. And every couple of years, they did it again, abandoned Boston for wilder shores and life-affirming art. Angkor Wat. The Nile. Venice. Nothing could bring back a lost baby, but there he seemed to be, in the face of the Christ child in Francisco de Zurbarán’s "The Virgin of Mercy." Gardner bought that painting 23 years after Jackie’s death; she never stopped looking for him.

I don’t claim that every piece in Gardner’s vast collection was somehow connected to her recollected son. Hunting after masterpieces — the thrill of the chase, the ecstasy of possession — became her abiding passion. “I suppose the picture-habit (which I seem to have) is as bad as the morphine or the whiskey one — and it does cost,” she wrote to her collector in Europe in 1896, as she awaited delivery of Titian’s quivering, poignant Rape of Europa, for which she paid a record price of 20,000 pounds. (The Gardner thieves, blessedly, passed on this vast masterwork.)

Episode 1: '81 Minutes'

Last Seen

But the whole of it — the books and tapestries and paintings and sculptures, the Venetian palace she created in which to showcase it — all of it was her bid to vanquish mortality. Death had claimed her only child. It would also take her husband in 1898, just as they prepared to buy the filled-in swampland in the Fens on which her museum would be built.

The spirit may be eternal, but the flesh is not. Leave it to Gardner, then, to have devised a work-around for this earthly inconvenience: a last will and testament that stipulated that her museum’s galleries should be left both “for the education and enjoyment of the public forever,” and also unchanged — nothing removed, nothing added.

“Don’t touch!” an elderly Gardner is recalled as having called out to a passel of visitors crossing her Raphael Room when her museum was still known as Fenway Court. Upon her death, in 1924, Gardner made the sentiment indelible. Nothing would touch or ever alter Isabella Stewart Gardner’s stone-and-stucco monument — until two thieves dressed as police officers did.

No mother loves all of her children the same. Who’s to say which of the 13 lost works would cause Gardner the most anguish? She’d written to her collector of feeling an “ache” for the “sea picture,” as she called Rembrandt’s "Storm on the Sea of Galilee." In acquiring Vermeer’s "The Concert," Gardner established herself as a serious collector, even outbidding the Louvre. But each of the stolen pieces was something she’d chosen and, we can assume, cherished.

There are a few show-stopping images of Isabella Stewart Gardner: that incandescent Zorn; a John Singer Sargent portrait that so well captured Gardner’s natural endowments it prompted her husband, otherwise tolerant of his wife’s many flirtations, to banish it from public view. But that photo — a young mother bashful with bliss — is my touchstone for what Gardner’s collection meant to her and what its 13 missing pieces mean for all of us.

She left them in our care. We need to get them back.

Kelly Horan

Stolen Art Watch, Judy Garland Ruby Slippers Recovered, Click Three Times, Wish Hard For Gardner Art Recovery

No place like home: 'Wizard of Oz' slippers found after Arizona donor offers reward

A scene from the 1939 classic "The WIzard of Oz." Pictured from left: Ray Bolger (Scarecrow), Jack Haley (Tin Man), Judy Garland (Dorothy) and Bert Lahr (Cowardly Lion).

MGM

It took 13 years, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation followed the yellow brick road of clues and has recovered a stolen pair of ruby slippers seen in the movie "The Wizard of Oz."
FBI Special Agent Jill Sanborn on Tuesday called the recovery a "significant milestone" at a news conference in Minneapolis. The bureau didn't say whether arrests have been made.
Sanborn said four pairs of ruby slippers are known to exist: A pair at the Smithsonian, a pair owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a pair belonging to a private party and the recently recovered "traveling pair."
"They are more than just a pair of slippers," said Grand Rapids Police Department Chief Scott Johnson. "They are an enduring symbol of the power of belief."

Stolen in 2005

A pair of ruby slippers, known as the "traveling pair," were recovered by the FBI after disappearing from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota 13 years ago.

Courtesy of: Federal Bureau of Investigation

The shoes were stolen in 2005 from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The museum is Garland's childhood home.
"The thieves not only took the slippers, they took a piece of history that will be forever connected to Grand Rapids and one of our city's most famous children," Johnson said.
In 2017, a person provided information on the shoes and how they could be returned. Investigators believed the person was trying to extort the shoes' owners, according to a statement.
The FBI aided the investigation with its Art Crime Team, laboratory, and field offices in Chicago, Atlanta and Miami. The bureau said the shoes were found during an undercover operation in Minneapolis.
The shoes were taken to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., to be compared with another pair of ruby slippers.

Arizona reward in play?

Judy Garland as Dorothy, with Toto, in "The Wizard of Oz in 1939.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

An anonymous Arizona donor in 2015 had offered a $1 million reward for information leading to the return of the slippers.
Judy Garland Museum Executive Director John Kelsch told The Arizona Republic at the time that the museum would not say whether the donor was from the Phoenix area.
The donor is a fan of Garland and "The Wizard of Oz."
MORE: Ask Clay: Hidden messages in 'Wizard of Oz'
In his The Republic interview, Kelsch said to claim the reward, the tipster must provide the slippers' exact location or have someone personally turn them in. Also, the slippers must be in good condition for authorities to authenticate them and the name of the thief must be provided.
Museum officials couldn't say Tuesday whether the recovery of the shoes fully met those criteria. Officials also didn't provide an update on the reward.

Who stole the shoes?

The FBI is still looking for information on the theft of the slippers. Multiple suspects were identified.
"There are certainly people out there who have additional knowledge regarding both the theft and the individuals responsible for concealing the slippers all these years," FBI Special Agent Christopher Dudley said.
The public is encouraged to provide information on the theft or extortion plot by calling 1-800-225-5324 or submit information online at tips.fbi.gov.

Art crimes

U.S. Attorney Chris Myers said the FBI's stolen art list contains about 8,000 art and culture items. Since the creation of the Art Crime team, more than 14,850 items have been recovered.
"There is a certain romance in these types of schemes," Myers said. "Sometimes sophistication, but at the end of the day it is a theft."
In 2017, a painting by Willem de Kooning was recovered at an estate sale in New Mexico. The painting, stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985, is estimated to be worth more than $100 million.

Art Crime

Stolen Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz Recovered

Dawn Wallace, a conservator for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, analyzes one of the recovered slippers at the Smithsonian's Conservation Lab in Washington, D.C. (Smithsonian photo)

A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and stolen from the actress’ namesake museum in Minnesota more than a decade ago has been recovered, the FBI announced today.
The iconic sequined shoes, known as the “traveling pair”—one of at least four pairs used in the film that are still in existence—were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005 and recovered earlier this summer during a sting operation. But the case is far from over.
“From the outset,” said Special Agent Christopher Dudley, who led the investigation from the FBI’s Minneapolis Division, “our top priority was the safe recovery of the slippers.” Although multiple suspects have been identified, Dudley said, “we are still working to ensure that we have identified all parties involved in both the initial theft and the more recent extortion attempt for their return. This is very much an active investigation.”
At a press conference in Minneapolis to announce the recovery, the FBI, along with the Grand Rapids Police Department, asked for the public’s assistance. “There are certainly people out there who have additional knowledge regarding both the theft and the individuals responsible for concealing the slippers all these years.” Dudley said. “We are asking that you come forward.”

Conservators at the National Museum of American History assisted the Minneapolis Division of the FBI in the case of ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz that were stolen in Minnesota in 2005. The museum analyzed and compared the recovered slippers with a pair that has been part of the Smithsonian collection since 1979.

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“We are still working to ensure that we have identified all parties involved in both the initial theft and the more recent extortion attempt for their return.”

Christopher Dudley, special agent, FBI Minneapolis

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Judy Garland, who played Dorothy Gale in the classic fairy tale film enjoyed by generations of moviegoers around the world, wore several pairs of the red slippers during the movie’s production, dancing her way down the yellow brick road and, at the story’s end, clicking her heels three times and repeating, “There’s no place like home.” The slippers are widely considered to be one of the most recognizable pieces of memorabilia in American film history, and are estimated to be worth several million dollars.
The star’s childhood house in Grand Rapids was turned into a museum in 1975 and remains a repository of The Wizard of Oz artifacts and memorabilia. The slippers disappeared from there in the early morning hours of August 28, 2005, and the crime has weighed heavily on the community, whose identity is proudly associated with Garland’s birthplace.
Despite a vigorous investigation by local authorities at the time, the slippers were not located, and no arrests were made. When the theft occurred, said Grand Rapids Police Department Chief Scott Johnson during today’s announcement, “the thieves not only took the slippers, they took a piece of history that will be forever connected to Grand Rapids and one of our city’s most famous children.”
In the summer of 2017, 12 years after the theft, an individual approached the company that insured the slippers, saying he had information about the shoes and how they could be returned. “When it became apparent that those involved were in reality attempting to extort the owners of the slippers,” Dudley explained, Grand Rapids police requested the FBI’s assistance. After nearly a yearlong investigation—with invaluable assistance from the FBI’s Art Crime Team, the FBI Laboratory, and field offices in Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami—the slippers were recovered during an undercover operation in Minneapolis.

These iconic sequined shoes, known as the “traveling pair”—one of at least four pairs used in The Wizard of Oz that are still in existence—were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 2005 and recovered earlier this summer during a sting operation.

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Agents from the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office transported the recovered slippers to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.—where another pair of the ruby slippers has been on display since 1979—for analysis and comparison.
Dawn Wallace, a Smithsonian conservator who has been working for the past two years to conserve the museum’s ruby slippers, which are nearly 80 years old, said a careful analysis led to the conclusion that the recovered shoes were similar in construction, materials, and condition to the museum’s pair. And it turns out the recovered shoes and the pair in the museum’s collection are mismatched twins.
Smithsonian curator Ryan Lintelman, who specializes in American film history, explained that there were probably six or more pairs of the slippers made for The Wizard of Oz. “It was common that you would create multiple copies of costumes and props,” he said. Somehow over the years, the pairs of shoes were mixed up.
Lintelman added that the Smithsonian’s ruby slippers “are among the most requested objects by visitors to the museum. There is an emotional response that visitors have,” he said. “People’s eyes light up.”
“Recovering a cultural item of this importance is significant,” the FBI’s Dudley noted. “So many people of all ages around the world have seen The Wizard of Oz and in that way have some connection to the slippers. That’s one of the things that makes this case resonate with so many.”
Anyone with additional information regarding the theft of the ruby slippers or the extortion plot is encouraged to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (225-5324) or submit information online at tips.fbi.gov.

Resources

• FBI Recovers Stolen Ruby Slippers Used in ‘The Wizard of Oz’

Videos

• Smithsonian Assists FBI in Minnesota Ruby Slippers Case