The window for someone to make big money off stolen European masterpieces is closing quickly.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, is offering a $10 million reward for information about 13 pieces stolen in 1990. But the offer is only good until Dec. 31.
The story of the heist is this: After midnight on March 18, 1990, two thieves tied up two of the museum’s guards. Less than an hour and a half later, they left with $500 million in art, including five works by Edgar Degas, three Rembrandts, and Johannes Vermeer’s “The Concert,” valued today at $300 million. The museum and the FBI have been looking for the works ever since, tracing them at one point to two people tied to organized crime in Boston, both of whom had died by 2015.
In May, trustees of the museum said they’d pay $10 million for information “leading directly to the recovery of all 13 works in good condition.” On Jan. 1, this amount will revert to the previous reward amount, $5 million.
The works are likely within a 60-mile radius of Boston, Anthony Amore, director of the museum’s security, told the New York Times. In the meantime, empty frames hang in the 115-year-old galleries in place of the missing artworks.