Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft (1903): Frames as policy · 431

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.

Thirteen absences in a frozen palace 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.

The Degas group was works on paper, not the museum's most famous oils. The Shang-dynasty or later Chinese gu and the flag finial show that the take was not a single-school shopping list. Insurance did not replace the objects: Gardner's will and the museum's practice treat the collection as a fixed installation, not a liquid inventory.