Museums
Institutions that have been targets, custodians, and battlegrounds of cultural heritage.
National Gallery (Oslo)
Norway's historic national art collection, from which Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' was brazenly stolen in 1994.
Ashmolean Museum
Britain's oldest public museum, and the scene of a New Year's Eve 1999 theft of a Cézanne landscape.
Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection
A private Zurich collection of Impressionist masterpieces, robbed at gunpoint in a brazen 2008 daylight heist.
Egyptian Museum (Cairo)
The Tahrir Square home of Tutankhamun's treasures, looted during the chaos of the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
Oratory of San Lorenzo
The Palermo oratory from which Caravaggio's 'Nativity' was cut from its frame in 1969 and lost forever.
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Vienna's imperial art museum, from which Cellini's priceless golden Saliera was stolen in 2003.
Christ Church Picture Gallery
The Oxford college gallery of Old Masters, targeted in a 2020 theft of works by Van Dyck, Carracci, and Salvator Rosa.
Green Vault (Grünes Gewölbe)
One of Europe's oldest treasure chambers, inside Dresden's Royal Palace, robbed of royal jewels in 2019.
Dulwich Picture Gallery
England's first purpose-built public art gallery — repeatedly targeted, most famously for a much-stolen Rembrandt.
Saint Bavo's Cathedral
The Ghent cathedral home of the Van Eyck altarpiece, whose 'Just Judges' panel vanished in 1934 and is still missing.
National Museum of Iraq
Baghdad's repository of Mesopotamian civilization, catastrophically looted during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kunsthal Rotterdam
A Rem Koolhaas-designed exhibition hall, site of a stunning 2012 dawn theft of seven modern masterpieces.
Kunstmuseum Bern
Switzerland's oldest art museum, the surprise heir to the vast Cornelius Gurlitt trove of Nazi-era art.
Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati)
The Cincinnati institution put on trial for obscenity in 1990 over its Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition.
Musée Marmottan Monet
Holder of the world's largest Monet collection, robbed at gunpoint in 1985 of the painting that named Impressionism.
São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP)
Brazil's iconic elevated museum, from which a Picasso and a Portinari were stolen in a swift 2007 heist.
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Canada's oldest art museum, scene of the audacious 1972 'Skylight Caper' — still unsolved.
Mosul Museum
Iraq's second-largest museum, whose Assyrian antiquities were smashed on camera by ISIS in 2015.
Nationalmuseum (Sweden)
Sweden's national gallery, robbed on New Year's Eve 2000 in a spectacular getaway by speedboat.
Brooklyn Museum
The New York museum at the center of the 1999 'Sensation' culture-war clash over Chris Ofili's Madonna.
Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris
The Paris modern-art museum robbed of five masterpieces by a lone 'Spiderman' burglar in 2010.
Russborough House
The Irish stately home holding the Beit collection — robbed a record four times, in 1974, 1986, 2001, and 2002.
Singer Laren
The Dutch museum from which a Van Gogh was stolen in 2020 — on the painter's birthday, during lockdown.
Royal Coin Cabinet (Stockholm)
Sweden's national museum of coins and economic history, the target of a numismatic theft.
Neue Nationalgalerie
Mies van der Rohe's Berlin temple of modern art, and the stage for Ulay's 1976 'art crime' performance.
Van Gogh Museum
The world's largest Van Gogh collection, robbed of two early paintings in a 2002 rooftop break-in.
Whitworth Art Gallery
The Manchester gallery at the heart of a strange 2003 theft-and-return of three works, found days later.
Musée d'Orsay
The great Paris museum of Impressionism, and a repeated stage for Deborah De Robertis's provocative interventions.
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
A Venetian-style palazzo in Boston built to house Isabella Stewart Gardner's collection. In 1990 it became the site of the largest unsolved art theft in history; by the terms of Gardner's will, the empty frames of the stolen works still hang in place, awaiting their return.
The Louvre
The world's most visited museum, the Louvre has been both a target and a fortress of cultural heritage. Its 1911 loss of the Mona Lisa transformed the painting into a global icon and reshaped museum security forever.
Munch Museum
Dedicated to Edvard Munch, the museum holds the bulk of the artist's output. A 2004 armed daylight robbery of The Scream and Madonna became one of the most brazen thefts of the modern era.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Encyclopedic and immense, the Met has in recent decades faced sustained scrutiny over the provenance of antiquities in its collection, returning looted objects to Italy, Greece, Cambodia, and beyond.
Institute of Illegal Images
Housed in Mark McCloud's Victorian home in San Francisco's Mission District, the Institute of Illegal Images holds the world's largest collection of LSD blotter art — over 33,000 sheets and hundreds of framed pieces. Named for the era when merely possessing the perforated paper could be treated as evidence of a crime, it reframes a psychedelic-era ephemeral form as serious American folk art, and survived two federal prosecutions of its founder. It is open to the public free of charge.