Art of the Heist

With the criminals behind the robbery now in custody the rest of the international gang set about trying to sell the paintings but one by one the authorities retrieved each one. The first, Renoir’s The Conversation, was retrieved in a police operation in a Stockholm café. The second, Renoir’s La Jeune Parisienne, turned up in Los Angeles during FBI surveillance of a drugs gang. The third and most valuable, the Rembrandt self portrait, was returned to the museum after a daring undercover operation by an FBI secret agent.

Using police surveillance footage and phone taps this documentary tells the story of the armed robbery and details the extraordinary sting organised by the FBI to find the works of art.

Sixteen years later no one has been charged for the robbery and the priceless paintings are still missing. The robbery went down in criminal folklore generating countless rumours and theories about who did it and where the paintings were. While some believe the paintings are still in America others are convinced that Boston gangster, James Whitey Bulger, was behind the robbery and had the paintings shipped to Ireland from where the recovery of the haul will involve an elaborate international deal involving Irish paramilitaries.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is one of the most eccentric in America. It houses the fabulous collection of wealthy socialite Isabella Stewart. In her will she stipulated that the collection should remain exactly as she left it. For that reason none of the paintings was insured and where the stolen paintings once hung there are now just empty frames. The FBI have got nowhere in their search for the robbers or the paintings but a succession of former criminals and policemen, enticed by a $5 million reward, have been on the trail of the Gardner museum art.

For years one of them, William Youngworth the Third, an art dealer and thief, has claimed that he could get the paintings back but no one knows whether he can or whether it’s a hoax. This documentary shows how the thieves pulled off the Boston heist and examines the Irish connection that might one day lead to the recovery of the priceless works of art.

Myatt’s fakes sold across the world. Only 73 of them have ever been identified. The rest are still out there. The scam was eventually exposed by a disgruntled partner and an American art expert living in Paris. Drewe was sentenced to six years in prison for his part in the fraud that shook the art world. Myatt went to prison for a year but now has a lucrative and legitimate career as a painter of “genuine fakes”.

This film traces the rise and fall of the forger and the conman and shows how, for years, they were able to fool some of the best art experts in the world.

For weeks the two paintings were stored in an unlocked abandoned bus on a remote farm. But why would thieves target such an iconic image? How could they ever hope to sell such an instantly recognisable work of art? It turns out that masterpieces are stolen for many reasons.

This documentary unravels the extraordinary story behind the theft of The Scream and the Madonna. This was not a heist for art’s sake or even for the money. Police are convinced that the daylight raid to steal the Munch paintings was linked to a ruthless armed robbery in which machine gun-carrying thieves killed a Norwegian policeman. They believe leaders of that gang ordered the theft of the paintings to divert police resources away from their investigation into the bank raid. It did not work: the leader of the bank raid is now in custody and three men have been convicted for their role in theft of the paintings.

 But this was not the first time Munch’s Scream has been stolen. In 1994 another version of the same painting was stolen in Oslo in a night time break-in at the city’s National Museum. That painting was eventually retrieved and is back on the museum’s wall. However, The Scream and the Madonna from the 2004 heist are still missing.

The prime suspect for the robbery – a local man called David Colvin - was murdered shortly afterwards and for twenty one years the trail went cold.

Meanwhile Bakwin employed a private detective and lodged the stolen paintings on the Art Loss Register, a database of stolen art run by an Englishman, Julian Radcliffe. In 1999 Lloyds underwriters in London were asked to insure a Cezanne for transport to England. They looked the painting up on the Art Loss Register, found it had been stolen from Bakwin and contacted Radcliffe. Complex negotiations followed involving Radcliffe and a mysterious Panamanian registered company called Eerie International which claimed to be holding the paintings. A deal was struck: the company handed over the Cezanne but was allowed to keep the other six lesser works.

The company also had to put in a sealed envelope the name of individual behind Eerie International. The Cezanne was returned to Bakwin…….. and he sold it for $30 million.

Another five years passed and Radcliffe received a call from the London auction house, Sotheby’s. Four of the remaining Bakwin paintings had been offered for sale. Radcliffe went to court claiming the first agreement had been under duress. He won. Better than that the judge ordered that the sealed envelope be opened to reveal the name of the man who had kept Bakwin’s paintings all these years. It was a Massachusetts lawyer, Robert Mardirossian – the lawyer for David Colvin the original suspect. This film follows the twists and turns, the deals and double dealing that after 30 years led to the recovery of one of the most important paintings of the twentieth century.

But then it all goes wrong. The Getty Museum is offered the mosaics for $20 million but the museum smells a rat and reports the case to the Cypriot authorities. Goldberg is now lumbered with mosaics that are virtually unsellable. Worse than that, the Cypriot government threatened legal action against her to get them back.

Had Goldberg been the victim of an elaborate scam? Had she been lured to Europe and seduced into buying the beautiful mosaics by a string of dubious characters desperate to off load the plundered antiquities? This film follows the complex trail of deception that leads from the sparse hillsides of Cyprus to Munich, Geneva and Amsterdam and finally to a courtroom in America. Peg Goldberg lost her case and the mosaics she bought for a $1 million can now be seen in a museum in Nicosia.