Empty Frames

The art heists that changed museum security forever

Mireille Thibodeau2 episodes2 min of audio77 playsEpisodic

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S1 · E2Jul 23, 20261:0245 plays Preview

Eighty One Minutes: The Gardner Museum Robbery

On the night after St Patrick's Day 1990 two men in police uniforms removed thirteen works from Boston's Gardner Museum. Mireille walks through the timeline, the empty frames and the decades-long inve…

S1 · E1Apr 12, 20260:5632 plays Members

Monday Closing: The Mona Lisa Leaves the Louvre, 1911

A house painter named Vincenzo Peruggia walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa under his smock. Mireille explains the lax security, the two-year silence, and the Florence dealer who called the po…

About the show

Empty Frames is about what happens when a painting disappears. Mireille Thibodeau spent a decade in museum registration and insurance, which means she knows how a canvas is catalogued, insured, crated and, occasionally, carried out of a side door at night. Each episode takes one famous theft, from the Mona Lisa walking out of the Louvre in 1911 to the two men dressed as police officers at the Gardner Museum in 1990, and explains how it happened, what the thieves misunderstood about selling stolen art, and what the museum world changed afterwards. It is a narrated documentary with interviews with conservators, loss adjusters and retired art-squad detectives, running about 35 minutes, released every second Thursday. For listeners who love museums and want the real procedural story, not the heist-movie version.

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