THE FINE ART OF LOOTING
This Canadian museum today marks a bit of an odd anniversary: 50 years ago it was the victim of an elaborate heist that sounds a lot like an oftrepeated Hollywood plotline. In the wee hours on September 4 1972, a man with picks on his boots — equipment used to scale telephone poles — climbed a tree from which he leapt onto the roof of the 1912 building on Sherbrooke Street, Montreal.
Presumably he knew that there was construction work under way on the roof, which was crucial for two reasons. First, it meant there was a ladder up there which he could lower for two accomplices waiting in the shadows. Second, and more crucially, there was a mid-repair skylight with a deactivated alarm.
In total Mission Impossible style, the three men, wearing ski masks and armed with sawn-off shotguns, dropped like spiders on a 15m rope into the museum. They tied up three guards and started going through the galleries, picking paintings off the walls.
It’s assumed they intended to make off with the entire collection in one of the museum’s trucks, but when one of the burglars accidentally set off a side-door alarm, they fled on foot lugging 55 pieces with them — paintings, figurines and jewels. Among the 18 paintings were works by Rubens, Thomas Gainsborough and Jan Bruegel the Elder, but the most notable — and valuable — was Rembrandt’s
Landscape with Cottages, painted in 1654.
Back then, the entire haul was valued at $2m.
Nicknamed the Skylight Caper, it was at the time the largest art heist in
North America (since eclipsed by a
Boston robbery in 1990). It remains the largest in Canadian history.
Later, the thieves tried to ransom the works back to the museum, allowing one of the paintings to be recovered as proof that they had the rest. But after a string of bumbled sting operations, they vanished.
None of the works was ever recovered, no arrests were made and the case remains open. Collectively, in modern terms, the missing paintings have been valued at $11.7m (about R198m).
Founded in 1860, it is the oldest art museum in the country, and is the largest by gallery space (53,095m2). Something of an Instagram hotspot for tourists, it welcomes more than a million visitors per year to see its vast collection displayed in five pavilions.
To stand a chance of winning R500, tell us the name of the museum. Email your answer to travelquiz@sundaytimes.co.za before noon on September 6. Last week’s winner is Tejal Kala. The correct answer was The Knife Angel.