I love art heists. 🥸

Since doing research for this project I learned that they’re not always the romantic, high octane events like the heists you see in the movies. Art thieves aren’t suave heartbreakers who slip into museums by distracting someone with a gifted rose or sly wink. Art thieves are clumsy and ordinary. They’re violent and often don’t even know the history or importance of the art they’re taking, so they don’t treat the pieces well.

The thieves of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 were almost… goofy. They wore police uniforms as a disguise and taped up the museum guard on duty. They stole things willy-nilly and cut paintings out of frames, immediately devaluing them.

This project is an exploration of this article through illustration. The illustrations are made out of washi tape and torn and cut post-it notes to create key imagery from the text.