The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: What the Robbery Can Teach Us About Loss

On March 18, 1990, during what should have been an uneventful night shift, 13 of the art pieces in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were stolen, including five works by Degas, Rembrandt’s only known seascape, and Vermeer’s “The Concert” (1663-6) — which is currently considered by some to be the most valuable stolen artwork in the world, and is valued by the museum at $250 million.

Due to suspicions that this robbery may have been an inside job or that perhaps the Boston mob was involved, the crime quickly became a pop culture story. Even decades later, the crime remains unsolved, and the museum still offers $10 million to anyone who can provide relevant information. With clues and leads sometimes being brought to light, many neglect the importance of what has been left behind at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — the frames.

Notably, the museum decided to keep the empty frames in place after the robbery, evoking a sense of frozen time. While the empty frames may elicit an eerie feeling, the decision to keep them on display is very much an intentional choice — though a surprising one nonetheless, since it is a reminder of the institution’s failure to protect some of its most precious objects after being warned about security concerns.

If the curators were to remove the frames in an effort to erase this memory from the institution’s history, the collection would perhaps feel more complete to the visitors, even though the valuable objects that were stolen would still be discussed inside the museum’s corridors. While this choice would have made moving on from the robbery easier, it would be the denial of the obvious: The museum has forever changed.

With this robbery, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s identity and trajectory was forever altered. The emptiness of the frames transforms them from transmitters of information and exhibition media to memorials for the very art that once lived within them. The word “memorial” truly encapsulates their role in the museum because they serve as reminders of the loss — transparent as they are, as they even showcase the wall tapestry behind them. The frames pay perpetual homage to the paintings by serving their purpose: seemingly guarding something that has been long lost.

Not only do these frames keep the memory of the art alive, but, in a way, they keep the art present in the museum space because they define a very concrete location to which the lost art belongs. As images of the stolen art have been circulating online ever since the robbery, the lost artworks are constantly in the mind of those in the know.

In this way, the frames reinstall the acclaimed paintings in their place when it comes to the mental perception of the viewers. Put simply, when looking at an unusually hollow frame, visitors will be able to imagine the famous painting once again.

The unoccupied frames represent a welcoming sense of hope that their former occupants will, one day, be found and repatriated. The frames demonstrate the constant lingering, but yet very present hope that the paintings will have a homecoming at last.

In a world where almost anything can be considered art, the bare frames become art themselves, serving as a symbol of life that is accompanied by bitter loss. The frames continue to entertain visitors despite the fact that they have been bereaved of something that can not be replaced. As difficult as it may seem to witness the empty frames and to accept that the art is gone, it is worse to forget. These frames preserve the art that once adorned the walls of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in visitor’s memories forever.