PROGRAM A REAL WORK OF ART
Tech puts stolen pieces back on Gardner walls
We just passed the 28th anniversary of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery, and to mark the occasion, a Boston-based startup is using technology to restore the pieces of stolen art to their rightful homes. Virtually, at least.
Cuseum, led by its founder Brendan Ciecko, has channeled the power of augmented reality in its experimental project Hacking The Heist. Using technology the team developed through the initiative, a user can hold an iPad up to the empty frames where the works of art once hung and see them restored to their original glory.
As the story goes, a pair of thieves posing as police officers broke into the Gardner Museum on March 18, 1990, and stole 13 works of art whose estimated value totaled $500 million. Flash forward to today, and the frames remain empty and the case unsolved. The museum still hopes to recover the pilfered pieces — which include Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee” and “A Lady and Gentleman in Black,” Vermeer’s “The Concert,” Degas’ “La Sortie de Pesage” and Manet’s “Chez Tortoni” — and offers a $10 million reward for any tips that will lead to their return.
While many Bostonians and art aficionados are familiar with the famous heist, the folks at Cuseum realized that a bunch of the museum’s visitors weren’t aware of the theft or had no idea what the missing pieces looked like. So the project is meant to fill in the literal blanks and allow people to view what’s no longer there.
The folks at Cuseum have spent time testing their Hacking The Heist technology within the local galleries. Ciecko says they have reached out to people at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum about possibly rolling their creation to the public for all visitors to use. In the meantime, everyone can watch videos of their tech at work on the website hackingtheheist.com.