Empty frames: the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum
Credit: Boston Globe
It’s the most costly St Patrick’s Day in art history. Around 1am on Sunday 18 March 1990, as revellers stumbled home from a hard day’s boozing and Boston’s police forces mustered for the downtown parade later that day, two men dressed as cops showed up outside the quiet back entrance to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
One of the two night watchmen on duty, a 23-year-old music school dropout called Rick Abath, buzzed them in. The men ordered Abath to call his partner down to the security desk. They told him he matched a suspect description and to step out from behind the desk – away from his panic button, his only connection to the outside world. They shoved both guards up against the wall and, according to Abath, announced themselves: “Gentleman, this is a robbery.”