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This Month In Art Heist Theories
Jul. 5th, 2019 11:20 amhttps://www.thedailybeast.com/did-whitey-bulger-pull-off-the-isabella-stewart-gardner-museum-art-heist-for-the-ira?
*Shrugs*—my guess is that if it’s been thirty years* since the theft and there’ve been no ransom demands, the paintings haven’t turned up on the black market, and no one’s responded to the offers of amnesty and a reward? Then the thieves weren’t professionals, they were obsessive art lovers who kept the paintings for themselves.
If this gets solved, it’ll be in ten or twenty years when some old guy dies of natural causes and the person who goes to clear out his apartment finds a dozen oil paintings hung up in his bedroom where he could look at them every day. Here’s hoping the person doesn’t assume the pictures are reproductions and throw them out—or then again, that may already have happened.
*I know the article suggests there’s an underground network that stashes stolen paintings until the heat is off, but if this is one of the most famed unsolved art heists of the twentieth century, a hundred years from now those paintings should still be identifiable enough to draw notice if anyone tries to fence them.
*Shrugs*—my guess is that if it’s been thirty years* since the theft and there’ve been no ransom demands, the paintings haven’t turned up on the black market, and no one’s responded to the offers of amnesty and a reward? Then the thieves weren’t professionals, they were obsessive art lovers who kept the paintings for themselves.
If this gets solved, it’ll be in ten or twenty years when some old guy dies of natural causes and the person who goes to clear out his apartment finds a dozen oil paintings hung up in his bedroom where he could look at them every day. Here’s hoping the person doesn’t assume the pictures are reproductions and throw them out—or then again, that may already have happened.
*I know the article suggests there’s an underground network that stashes stolen paintings until the heat is off, but if this is one of the most famed unsolved art heists of the twentieth century, a hundred years from now those paintings should still be identifiable enough to draw notice if anyone tries to fence them.
