Monday, May 30, 2011

The Gardner Heist Inspired Renewed Coverage of the MMFA Theft

In 2009, journalist Ulrich Boser published The Gardner Heist, The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft, of the 1990 theft of a dozen paintings in 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. In his 11th chapter titled "Program for An Artistic Soiree II", Boser writes about the MMFA theft:
After a Rembrandt, a Delacroix, and a Gainsborough were stolen from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, a group of criminals tried to ransom the paintings back. The gang wanted $250,000 and returned one of the works, a Brueghel, to prove that they had access to the loot. But when the day of the buyback arrived, one of the thieves saw a police car and called off the deal. The paintings have never been seen by the public again.
I emailed Ulrich Boser and asked him if he had any more information but he did not, although he was interested in the subject. After poking around the subject for a few months, I emailed him again because I couldn't find anything substantive on the theft. He emailed me a link to an article written by Bill Bantey on the 35th anniversary of the MMFA theft. Mr. Bantey had been a journalist on politics and crime for decades in Montreal and he had also, coincidentally, been the director of public relations for the MMFA at the time of the theft. Mr. Bantey later told me that he was also the highest ranking museum official that Labor Day weekend and the first museum administrator to be called by the security guard after the robbery.

Q&A with Quebec's first art crime investigative team

The police file of the 1972 theft of the MMFA is with Quebec's art crime investigation team. I interviewed them through Sergeant Alain Dumouchel via email and published the response on ARCA's art crime blog.

Alain Lacoursière's Main Suspect in the 1972 Theft of the MMFA Emails Him a Link to a Mercedes-Benz Commercial Video that Shows a Stolen Painting in a Bank Vault in Hong Kong

In April 2011, in one of our quarterly emails, Alain Lacoursière, as he updated me on the extension of his Canadian television show, said that his favorite suspect in the MMFA theft had sent him a link to a Mercedes-Benz video on YouTube about bank robbers recovering a stolen painting. You may read about it here and here on ARCA's art crime blog.

Journalist Sylvain Larocque Devotes Sixth Chapter in Biography of Alain Lacoursière to the 1972 Theft at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

I published a two-part series on the sixth chapter of Alain Lacoursière's biography by Sylvain Larocque which discusses the 1972 theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. You may read about it here and here.

Presented Paper on the 1972 Theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts at ARCA's International Art Crime Conference in Amelia in 2010

Last summer I presented my paper on the unsolved 1972 theft of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts at ARCA's second annual international art crime conference in Amelia, Italy. You can read more about that conference on the ARCA blog here. In June, ARCA's Journal of Art Crime will publish my article on Canada's largest art theft.