Word: artfully
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What does it take to steal a Rembrandt? Surely one must divert the museum guard’s attention, disable alarms, twist through zigzagging lasers and plan a smooth escape. At least so it would seem from art heist films like “The Thomas Crown Affair.” But, according to the infamous art thief Myles J. Connor, Jr., all you really need is the audacity to stride into a museum during open hours, grab a painting, and run like hell...
...bank robber, and a cat burglar. He’s gotten into violent vendettas against Boston police, been put in jail, and broken out armed only with a gun carved out of soap. He even owned a pet cougar. But Connor is most notorious as a master of the art heist—so notorious that he was suspected of the 1990 robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum while incarcerated...
...describing his adventures, he makes the “challenge” seem almost negligible. His memoirs, recounted in the new book “The Art of the Heist,” are thus vastly impressive despite their troubling implications. Connor’s anecdotes speak to the vulnerability of some of the most prominent galleries in the country—Harvard museums included—whose efforts to balance visitor safety with property protection do not always guarantee the security of the artwork...
...Connor is the son of a policeman and the great-nephew of a Hudson Valley painter. His family collected antiques, and he recalls learning about both them and art as a child. This early aesthetic education had more than practical importance. “I was brought up with the items and appreciated them,” he says...
...several ways, Connor’s attractive personality served him well in art theft. The joint author of his book, Jenny Siler, reports that when she interviewed his partners in crime none of them would speak ill of him. “I have never in my life met someone who could engender such incredible loyalty,” Siler says. His sharp-eyed intelligence must have been another asset when it came to eluding security measures. “He thinks of things that other people wouldn’t think of,” Siler says, a quality...