Art & Culture
‘Paintings were suddenly seen as money’: The reason art heists exploded in the 1970s
Acclaimed new film The Mastermind, starring Josh O’Connor, tells the story of an art robbery gone wrong. It’s inspired by a wave of similar thefts during a decade known for upheaval.
In May 1972, two men walked into the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts and hurried out carrying four paintings by Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso and a supposed Rembrandt (now believed to be the work of one of his students), holding a group of visiting high school students at gunpoint and shooting a security guard in the process. With the stolen artworks’ worth tallying up to $2m (£1.5m), the New York Times ranked it among “the largest art robberies in modern times”. Some say it even inspired a far more famous crime nearby: the 1990 heist at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, in which $500m (£370m) of art was looted, making it the costliest theft in US history full stop, with the crime remaining unsolved.
The Worcester heist was orchestrated by career criminal Florian “Al” Monday, but the game was up after the two thieves he hired for the raid boasted about their exploits in their local bar. Within a month, the paintings were safely retrieved from a pig farm in Rhode Island and returned to the gallery. “Ironically, Monday – before he was an art thief – had a band, and I have the 45 of his record,” writer-director Kelly Reichardt tells the BBC. Her new film The Mastermind, which is released in the US this weekend, is loosely inspired by the chain of events that followed the Worcester robbery, as well as the wave of art heists that followed over the course of that decade.
Praised by The Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw for locating “the unglamour in the heist”, Reichardt’s thoughtful art crime caper dismantles the usual rules of the glitzy, sensationalised heist movie. Blockbusters have long popularised the idea that there is something classy about this category of crime, particularly when it involves art: think, for example, of the 1999 version of The Thomas Crown Affair, in which Pierce Brosnan plays a very suave billionaire orchestrating a raid on New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Reichardt’s take on the genre adopts a slower pace and more exacting eye for the way in which its art robbery cataclysmically unfolds. Josh O’Connor takes the title role as the brains behind the operation: JB Mooney, a middle-class, well-educated art school drop-out now ailing as an underemployed carpenter in Massachusetts. Under pressure from his well-to-do parents – a retired judge (Bill Camp) and a socialite (Hope Davis) – to repay their loans to him, he cases the fictional Framingham Art Museum for a heist. But from the moment that one of his henchmen asks how he plans to sell on the stolen paintings – which would be difficult due to their recognisability – the scheme begins to go awry.
If you start to get down into the minutiae of a robbery like this and don’t concentrate on the bigger strokes, then by nature it becomes de-glamorised – Kelly Reichardt
Reichardt came across an article about the 50-year anniversary of the Worcester Art Museum robbery while working on her previous film, Showing Up (2002), a comedy drama about two rival sculptors, and decided to use the story as the foundation of her next feature. All that was left to do was to create the character of JB. “The political ideas, the genre ideas – these are things you think about and study, but then you have to let go of all that and concentrate on the details of the film you’re making with what your character situation is like,” says Reichardt. “If you start to get down into the minutiae of those things and don’t concentrate on the bigger strokes, then by nature it [becomes] de-glamorised.”
Reading about the 1972 robbery brought back memories for Reichardt of the “many smash-and-grabs at the time” that frequently appeared in newspaper headlines. Mere months after the Worcester Art Museum heist, a robbery since dubbed the “skylight caper” took place in Canada – the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was raided by three armed robbers, who clinched $2m (£1.5m) of paintings, jewels and valuable objects, marking the largest theft in the nation’s history. Across the Atlantic, in 1976, 119 of Picasso’s final works were pilfered from France’s Palais des Papes by three thieves while they were on show during a visiting exhibition.
Then there was the case of Rose Dugdale, an Oxford University graduate and heiress turned fierce Irish republican, who was the focus of Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy’s high-octane 2023 art-heist drama Baltimore. In 1974, together with several IRA members, she took 19 paintings by the likes of Johannes Vermeer and Peter Paul Rubens from Ireland’s Russborough House, and held them to ransom, hoping for the release of imprisoned IRA members. Lawlor told Cineuropa: “There was something incredibly well organised about it and really badly thought out. They are so driven but completely blind to the wider political reality.”
The history of art theft
Before this spate of burglaries, history had seen countless other lootings and plunderings of prized art pieces, from the 1473 theft by pirates of Hans Memling’s The Last Judgment from a ship bound for Florence, to the infamous purloining of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia, an embittered former employee at the gallery. When he was caught two years later, he only served a six-month prison sentence.
Yet the Massachusetts robbery undeniably signalled a gear change for the art heist industry. According to art historian Tom Flynn, the surge in heists in the 1970s “coincides with the boom of the art market”. Citing the 1977 launch of Antiques Roadshow – the long-running BBC TV show in which a team of experts appraise art pieces and objects – and its ensuing popularity, Flynn adds: “It’s a cultural change where we start to see works of art as the equivalent of money.”
Meanwhile, criminals were becoming aware of the flimsiness of museum security, making works of art seem an easy target. News reports in the early 1970s warned of funding “crises” for museums and cutbacks in security, particularly amid high inflation. Smaller-scale thefts, such as the stealing of Francisco Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery in 1961 and the disappearance of three Rembrandts from Dulwich Picture Gallery in 1966, revealed how straightforward it could be simply to lift a painting from gallery walls undetected.
Part of the appeal of these characters is their outsmarting the establishment. The fact that art heists usually don’t involve private individuals makes it more acceptable – Susan Ronald
Like the guard injured during the Worcester Art Museum robbery, security employees rarely carried arms – and, as portrayed mockingly in The Mastermind, they could often be dozy “retirees” or “acid heads”, as Reichardt says, with limited training. She adds: “Museums used to have these cool circular drives out front, which made the getaway pretty handy.” And, while the film features an FBI art crime investigator reminiscent of real-life agent Robert Wittman – who recovered $300m (£225m) worth of art over the course of his career – the actual FBI Art Crime Team was only founded in 2004.
But as Flynn notes, while museums may have been slow to appreciate the threat of robbery in the past, the robbers have not generally displayed the sharpest acumen either. “The history of art crime and major art heists has been one of opportunist idiots who don’t really understand the nature of works of art themselves,” he says, referring to their potential for damage, “or indeed the market for works of art. [Then] these guys suddenly discover, to their horror, that the objects they’ve stolen are very difficult things to shift.”
The allure of the art robber
An archetype in fiction of the art robber as lovable rogue also started to emerge during the 1960s and ’70s. Amid unrest driven by the Vietnam War and the Nixon administration, disillusionment and discontent reached high levels, especially among younger generations in the US. Simultaneously, films such as 1964’s Topkapi (where a band of art thieves attempt to steal from a palace in Istanbul), 1966’s How to Steal a Million (where Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole plan a heist to altruistic ends) and the same year’s Gambit (starring Michael Caine as a plucky cat burglar stealing an antique bust) helped to glamorise such characters.
According to historical author Susan Ronald, who specialises in art crime, the rise of the art robber in pop culture reflects the time’s anti-authority mentality. “Part of [the appeal of these characters] is [their] outsmarting the establishment,” she explains. “The fact that art heists usually don’t involve private individuals makes it more acceptable. It’s an institution, and there’s something quite daring about it.”
Perhaps it’s partly down to the glorification of these art stealers that misconceptions about arts heists have taken root – for example, the idea of them being a “victimless crime”. “We don’t take it seriously enough,” says Flynn, “which is why the criminals quite often get ridiculous [short] sentences when you consider that they’ve committed a serious cultural crime. But because it’s art, we don’t think it’s so important.”
The Mastermind works in many ways to upend entrenched ideas about art robbers. From Caine in Gambit to Alain Delon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge (1970), such a figure was often represented as a heartthrob in the films of that time. But, with JB, Reichardt hoped to subvert that. “These guys are [actually] such jerks. They’re misogynist. They can afford to break away and do what they want. They’re not pinned down with kids. Just the idea of being able to be the outlaw is a privilege, but in the end you root for them, it’s just a narrative thing.”
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We get a nuanced perspective on JB’s character through his long-suffering wife, Terri (Alana Haim), and unimpressed fellow graduate Maude (Gaby Hoffman), both forced to put up with his antics. “There is an added, more objective look at him at times through the women in JB’s life who he counts on, who are taxed by his freedom. Personal freedom being a huge theme in American politics today – but at what cost and who carries the weight of that?”
Today, robberies of public museums and galleries are far less frequent, with criminals now “cottoned on to the fact that these are essentially non-fungible objects”, says Flynn. However, recent funding cuts by the US government could spell a troubling future for museum security again – even if there are bigger threats to paintings these days, says heritage consultant Vernon Rapley. “It’s not just security that will suffer – it will be the very fabric of the buildings as well. If you don’t invest in your roofs and windows, then ultimately, weather and climate change are probably a greater risk to objects, in fact, than criminals are.”
The Mastermind is released in US cinemas on 17 October and UK cinemas on 24 October
Tam O’Shanter is a rip-roaring tale of witches and alcohol, but it has hidden depths. On Burns Night this Sunday – and 235 years after the poem was published in 1791 – Scots everywhere may well be treated to a masterwork with a unique, universal appeal.
If you’re Scottish, or if you wish you were, then this Sunday is a red-letter day. Scotland’s greatest poet, Robert Burns, was born on 25 January 1759, and Burns Suppers are now held every year, all over the world, to mark his birthday. The guests drink whisky (not “whiskey”, please – that’s the Irish and US spelling), they eat haggis, tatties and neeps (don’t ask), and they hear some of the bard’s many ballads and poems. Ae Fond Kiss, To A Mouse and Auld Lang Syne are usually on the bill. And somebody may well recite Tam O’Shanter, a rip-roaring yarn about witchcraft and heavy drinking that was first published 235 years ago in 1791. It’s a poem that has even more to it than most Burns Supper regulars might realise.
“Tam O’Shanter is Burns’s masterpiece, it really is,” says Pauline Mackay, professor of Robert Burns studies and cultural heritage at the University of Glasgow. “It’s one of his most popular works, so when you say it’s your favourite Burns poem, people say, ‘Urgh, that’s so obvious’. But actually, I’ve been studying it for many, many years, and it’s so multifaceted. Burns brought all of his considerable talents to bear on capturing what inspires him, what motivates him, and his own perception of humanity and human nature.”
And that’s not all. Robert Irvine, the editor of Burns: Selected Poems and Songs, notes that there is a darkness to the poem that goes beyond its spine-tingling descriptions of the devil and his minions. “There’s some weird stuff going on there,” he says.
Most of the revellers are ‘rigwoodie hags’, but one witch, Nannie, is young, attractive and scantily clad
The poem tells the mock-heroic tale of Tam O’Shanter, a farmer who spends as much time drinking as he does working. At the end of one market day in Ayr, he retires to the pub with his “ancient, trusty, drouthy crony” Souter Johnnie (ie, Johnnie the shoemaker), never mind that his wife Kate is waiting at home. It’s only after hours of boozing and flirting with the landlady that Tam finally sets off on his horse, Maggie. But it’s a dark and stormy night, so he has to hold on to his hat, and sing songs to keep up his spirits. “Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet; / Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet.” This reference to a “blue bonnet”, incidentally, is why beret-like flat hats with pom-poms are called Tam O’Shanters.
When he approaches Alloway’s Auld Kirk, Tam notices that a diabolical party is underway inside: witches and warlocks are dancing, and the devil himself, Auld Nick, is playing the bagpipes. Most of the revellers are “rigwoodie hags”, but one witch, Nannie, is so young, attractive and scantily clad that Tam yells out the only words he speaks in the poem: “Weel done, Cutty-sark!” This cat call would later lend its name to the Cutty Sark, a 19th-Century clipper ship that can be visited in Greenwich, London. Roughly translated, it means: “Well done, Short Dress!”
Nannie and her cohorts aren’t pleased to hear it: Tam has to flee on horseback with a crowd of screeching witches in hot pursuit, “Wi’ mony an eldritch skriech and hollo”. Luckily for him, witches can’t cross running water, and the River Doon is nearby. Tam manages to race over the bridge to safety, but Maggie the horse isn’t quite so fortunate. Nannie grabs hold of her tail just as she steps on to the Brig O’ Doon, and – spoiler alert – she is left with “scarce a stump”.
Rude jokes and chilling imagery
Carruthers calls it a “fairly hackneyed ghost story plot”, but the way Burns tells his story means that “there’s no other poem like it in Scottish literature”. Tam O’Shanter is “incredibly rich, so visual, so carefully crafted and so well-paced”, Mackay tells the BBC. “There’s just so much in there: everything from the way Burns has absorbed and assimilated the landscape and folklore of Ayrshire where he was born, and Dumfriesshire where he was writing the poem, to his keen interest in the supernatural, to the various comments that he makes on the complexities of human relationships and gender. All of this is so fascinating.”
There are lines in Scots, and others in English. There are rude jokes, and there is chillingly macabre imagery. There are tributes to the joys of getting drunk with friends in a cosy pub: “Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious. / O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!” And there are rueful philosophical musings on how transient those joys are: “But pleasures are like poppies spread, / You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.” Sometimes the narrator will address Tam himself: “O Tam, hadst thou but been sae wise, / As ta’en thou ain wife Kate’s advice!” At other times, he will address another character or the reader / listener – one reason, says Irvine, why the poem “lends itself to performance”, and has become a Burns Supper staple.
In fact, there isn’t much that Burns doesn’t do in Tam O’Shanter – and he does it all in rhyming iambic tetrameter. “He’s showing off,” says Irvine. “He’s doing one thing, and saying ‘Hey, look, I can do this other thing as well.’ In his first volume of poems, he does that between one poem and the next. He adopts different verse genres, he switches from Scots to English, he borrows from all sorts of different traditions – both what we think of now as the folk tradition, and the literary traditions of England and Scotland. It’s a virtuoso display of all the different things that he can do. And in Tam O’Shanter, he’s doing all that within one poem.”
Appropriately for a Burns Supper centrepiece, Tam O’Shanter is a feast, its most satisfying ingredient being its fond and insightful portrait of a character described as “the universal everyman” by Prof Gerard Carruthers, the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns. Burns is admired for his egalitarian politics, and even in his rollicking horror comedy, his sympathy for the common man shines through. “Tam O’Shanter is a poem of misdirection,” Carruthers tells the BBC. “Burns is saying: ‘Look at this! Look at the witch! Look at the horse!’ Whereas in fact the real thing that he is talking about is the way in which we’re incorrigible as human beings.” The poem glows with “ridicule and affection at the same time for Tam, and by extension for the human psyche in general”.
It’s a poem about humanity – the pleasures and the appetites, the challenges and the frailties – Gerard Carruthers
Burns – a notorious womaniser – is especially sharp on masculine foibles. “Burns knows the male mind,” says Carruthers. “He knows that men in a lot of ways are stupid wee boys.” On the other hand, says Mackay, women may recognise themselves in Tam O’Shanter, too. “It’s a poem about humanity – the pleasures and the appetites, the challenges and the frailties – and I think that’s one of the reasons why Burns is so universally popular. He talks about what it is to be a human being – and everything that we see in different places throughout his poetic oeuvre is somehow represented in this one poem.”
Still, alongside its compassion, there is devilry of more than one kind in Tam O’Shanter. “The weird and disturbing thing about this poem is that Burns’s father, William Burnes, was a very pious and serious man who despaired of the libertine tendencies of his son,” says Irvine. “He organised repairs to Alloway Kirk when Burns and his brother were boys, and one of the reasons for that is that he wanted to be buried there – and he was. So, in 1784 Burns’s father was buried in Alloway churchyard, which Burns then makes famous as the site of a witches’ orgy. Was he getting revenge on his father for his disapproval of his eldest son?”
As well as everything else Burns is doing in Tam O’Shanter, it could be argued that he is almost literally dancing on his father’s grave. Anyone who hears it at a Burns Supper on Sunday will have plenty to chew on.
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Paris ( Imran Y. CHOUDHRY):- The Embassy of Pakistan organized an event on the archeological studies of the 5000-year-old Indus Valley Civilization with Dr. Aurore Didier, Director of the French Archaeological Mission of the Indus Bassin.
Representatives of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, the Agha Khan Development Network (AKDN), archaeologists, historians and diplomats attended the event, which was organized with the support of the “Cercle des Amis du Pakistan”.
Dr. Didier briefed the audience on the history of the archeological excavations carried out by French archeologists in Pakistan. She gave an update on the latest research resulting from ten years of excavations at Chanhu-daro, one of the emblematic sites of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. She also addressed how the adaptation of ancient populations to river and environmental fluctuations can be a key to understanding the current crises related to climate change and natural disasters that heavily impact South Asia today.
Addressing the audience, Ambassador Mumtaz Zahra Baloch noted the seventy years of cooperation between Pakistan and France in the domain of archeology. She appreciated the contributions made by the French Archeological Mission in Pakistan in research on the Indus Valley Civilization; and in promoting knowledge and competencies amongst local communities and scholars.
The Ambassador also reiterated her warm support for the “Cercle des Amis du Pakistan” for its initiatives in highlighting the cultural richness and diversity of Pakistan.
Art & Culture
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Instead of standing, share the seat on the bus
Isn’t it much better than making a fuss,
Whatever you do during tug-of-war, do not push the rope
Or you’ll be the laughing stock amidst cries of, “What a dope.”
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