Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Join the heist with Netflix’s new doc

Where were you during “ one of the largest museum thefts of all time”? Well, thanks to the streaming giant Netflix and with the help from the producers of The Irishman, we get to enjoy streaming everything behind the great Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery. Let’s take a look at the brand new docuseries with four thrilling episodes  – This Is A Robbery. 

This Is A Robbery

According to Town and Country Magazine, it all began on March 18th 1990 when two men walked straight into the famous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Not only were these people pretending to be police officers, but they also were highly armed, and just over an hour later art pieces worth a fortune in the Boston museum were suddenly gone. 

How? How do two ordinary people (with pistols) get away with such a grand robbery? That’s the question this docuseries tries to answer. In fact, they robbed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with art valued approximately $500 million! 

Famous masterpieces by exceptional artists like Vermeer & Rembrandt were stolen and was recorded as “the largest theft from a museum in modern history” And thanks to the incredible producers (and brothers) Colin & Nick Barnicle, we get to see how they possibly got away with it! 

Did you hear about the robbery?

Diving into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s docuseries you’ll be transported back to 1990 with a handful of witnesses and persons of interest. Per Town and Country Magazine Colin Barnicle explained: 

“A lot of people assumed at first that it was a high-brow Thomas Crown Affair– type thing . . . When you hear about a robbery involving a Rembrandt or Vermeer, you think of international criminal masterminds.” So who could it have been? 

Luckily, Colin & Nick Barnicle were prepared and interviewed many people to find out exactly what happened and who was most likely to blame at the time, however once they started, the chase got bigger & bigger to find answers. 

Like the producers said in the Netflix documentary: “Boston is such a small city that if you live here it’s kind of inevitable that you’ll know someone who was somehow involved in the case. We’d speak to one person and they’d say, ‘Have you talked to so and so?’”

Investigation continues

Besides, for Collin & Nick Barnicle’s incredible sleuthing, they also show the audience what exactly was stolen and have focused on multiple theories and even flew to Northern Ireland to speak to experts about the IRA operations to find out about “trading art for guns” and whether this could’ve been a similar situation. 

Barnicle explained the reasons for diving into countless theories and claimed: “Researching the case was like learning the game of chess . . . The more you know about it, the more options you see.” In fact, the producers added: “I don’t think you can say the case is solved until the art is found.” 

Yes, it’s true – according to Independent, “the robbers have yet to be identified” and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has placed a whopping reward of $10 million to anyone that knows information to lead them straight to the “safe return of the stolen works”.

Watching the documentary 

Could the art be destroyed? Was it a protest against these artists? Who knows? What we do know is that the night of the robbery was a night the museum will never forget. Evening Standard noted that a young night watchman Rich Abath let the “officers” inside the museum who claimed to have responded to “a nearby disturbance”. 

However, because they had their “uniforms and badges” these officers were let in and asked: “Are you here alone?” Which Rich Abath responded “No” and called his other man down and the thieves quickly told them: “Gentleman, this is a robbery”, and the rest is history. 

No spoilers here – find out how they got away with it all on Netflix! 

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Are you ready to dive deep into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery investigation? Let us know in the comments.