Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft (1990): A palace built to stay still

The museum opened in 1903 as Isabella Stewart Gardner's Venetian-style palace. Her 1924 will required that the collection stay as she arranged it. After the theft the empty frames were left on the walls of the Dutch Room and nearby galleries — a curatorial decision that became the public face of the unsolved file. The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a case that is still open more than three decades later.

In 2013 the FBI said it believed it had identified the thieves as members of a New England organised-crime group and that the works had moved through organised-crime circles. No painting has been recovered. The museum's reward, raised to $10 million in 2017 for information leading to the return of all thirteen works in good condition, still stands. Possessing the stolen objects remains a federal crime even though the original theft's statute of limitations has run.

The Gardner theft is the largest unsolved art theft on the United States public record: a named list of works, empty frames, an FBI file and no courtroom ending. The Concert is one of only about three dozen paintings securely given to Vermeer. The Storm on the Sea of Galilee is Rembrandt's only seascape. Together with A Lady and Gentleman in Black and a small Rembrandt self-portrait etching, they made the Dutch Room the centre of the loss. Manet's Chez Tortoni was taken from the Blue Room.