15 Daring And Totally Outrageous Art Thefts

Dutch artist Frans Hals's 17th-century painting "Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer," worth about $18 million, was stolen from the Hofje van Aerden museum in Leerdam, Netherlands, not once, not twice, but three times: in 1988, 2011, and 2020.

The painting was recovered after the first two incidents. But despite tighter security measures put in place after theft No. 2, thieves managed to break in again through a door early in the morning on August 26, 2020. Although the culprits set off alarms, they managed to escape.

Art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC, "It's very difficult to secure small museums as it costs too much money. If they want to have your stuff, they'll get in." 

In April 2021, authorities from the Netherlands announced they had detained an unnamed suspect in the 2020 incident. The 58-year-old man, nabbed at his home in Baarn, is also suspected of taking a Van Gogh painting from the Singer Laren Museum in 2020. The paintings were not found.  

In the winter of 2002, two crooks lifted Van Gogh's "View of the Sea at Scheveningen" and "Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen" from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. They entered the premises through the roof, and managed to obscure their faces from the security cameras. Two suspects were detained and later convicted in 2004.

The paintings were found in 2016 in a farmhouse on property owned by alleged Italian crime boss and fugitive Raffaele Imperiale. In August 2021, Imperiale was detained in connection to the thefts, with Italian authorities saying in a statement that they had brought "to justice a leading exponent of international drug trafficking and money laundering who has accumulated considerable illicit assets mainly through the sale of cocaine.” Among those illicit assets were the two paintings, authorities said. 

Earlier in 2021, Imperiale said in an interview with the newspaper Il Mattino that he had nothing to do with taking the paintings: "I bought them directly from the thief because the price was attractive... But most of all because I love art."

While everyone else was celebrating the coming of the new millennium on the night of December 31, 1999, one British crook successfully nabbed a painting worth nearly $5 million. The incident took place at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.

The offender broke into the museum while the entire city was distracted by loud fireworks. He cut a hole in the museum's roof and dropped down using a rope ladder. Once inside, he released smoke to obfuscate himself from the cameras. This painting by Paul Cezanne has never been recovered. 

In the course of only two years - from 2004 to 2006 - a chief librarian at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts gradually replaced 125 paintings with his own works of art. Xiao Yuan sold the pieces at various auctions for a total of $6 million. When he was caught, he still had another $11 million worth of stolen art in his possession.

While confessing, Xiao defended himself by claiming that such deceptive thievery was extremely common in the art community. He even claimed that unknown artists had replaced his fakes with their own fakes.  

In late March 2020, as the coronavirus spread globally, museums were emptied, providing the perfect opportunity for some unknown crook (or crooks) to raid The Singer Laren - a museum in the Netherlands - and swipe Van Gogh's "The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884." 

According to The Associated Press, the painting's value was not immediately reported, but it is estimated to be worth millions. Museum director Jan Rudolph de Lorm said in a statement:

It is very bad for the Groninger Museum [which loaned the painting to the Singer], it is very bad for the Singer, but it is terrible for us all because art exists to be seen and shared by us, the community, to enjoy to draw inspiration from and to draw comfort from, especially in these difficult times.

Investigators reported that the crook (or crooks) "smashed a glass door to get into the museum," which set off an alarm that triggered law enforcement. By the time they arrived, however, the culprit (or culprits) were gone. 

In April 2021, authorities from the Netherlands announced they had detained an unnamed suspect in the 2020 incident. The 58-year-old man, nabbed at his home in Baarn, is also suspected of taking a Frans Hals painting from the Hofje van Aerden museum, also in the Netherlands, in 2020. The paintings were not found. 

In the spring of 1990, two men posed as police officers to steal 13 pieces of art worth $500 million. The incident occurred in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, where they showed up in fake uniforms and wax mustaches, claiming they had received a call about a disturbance.

After gaining entrance with their false identities, the robbers tied up the security guards and carried out the scheme in under an hour. They stole pieces from well-known artists including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Manet, and Flinck. These valuable works have never been recovered, and the FBI is still offering a $5 million reward for information regarding their whereabouts.