Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft (1990)

On the night of March 18, 1990, two men in police uniforms get themselves let in through the staff door of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, tie up the two guards in the basement and leave with thirteen works, including Vermeer's "The Concert" and "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee," Rembrandt's only known seascape. The value most often cited is around 500 million dollars. The museum had no theft insurance. No indemnity, then, and no subrogated insurer to fund its own search or negotiate a buy-back. A fine art underwriter reads the file backward. A collection of that value at a single site, guarded at night by two people, would first have raised an accumulation question, ahead of any question of rate, and security (the door-opening procedure, patrols, an alarm wired to a monitoring center) would have become a condition of cover. The museum bore the loss alone. Its only possible "indemnity" is restitution, and it pays for it up front as a reward: 5 million dollars for years, raised to 10 million in 2017. The founder's will forbids any change to the hanging, and the empty frames are still on the walls. The case also shows that a work this famous cannot be sold in the open: its market value says nothing about what it is worth to whoever holds it. More than thirty-five years later, none of the thirteen pieces has been recovered. Not to be confused with art theft in general, the risk the entry of that name describes for all collections, nor with a buy-back clause after recovery, which assumes an indemnity has been paid.