VISUAL ARTS

In the early morning hours of March 18, 1990, thieves dressed as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and stole thirteen works of art. Twenty years later, the investigation to recover the missing paintings continues. In a rare public program, Gardner Museum Director of Security Anthony Amore dispels some of the myths and misinformation by telling the real account of what happened on the night of the theft. New information on the museum’s progress to recover the works of art add to this dramatic ever-evolving story of loss and hopeful recovery. Anthony Amore is the security director for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Prior to joining the museum in 2005, he spent 14 years with the federal government as a special agent with the Federal Aviation Administration and later joined the Department of Homeland Security. He spearheaded the efforts to federalize security at Logan International Airport after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and was the agency's lead responding agent to the attempted terrorist attack by the so-called "Shoe Bomber" that same year. He is currently investigating the theft of 13 priceless works of art stolen from the Gardner Museum in 1990. Tom Ashbrook, host of National Public Radio’s On Point, is an award-winning journalist whose career spans twenty years as a foreign correspondent, newspaper editor, and author. He spent ten years in Asia starting at the South China Morning Post and later as a correspondent for The Boston Globe. He began his reporting career covering the refugee exodus from Vietnam and the post-Mao opening of China, and has covered turmoil and shifting cultural and economic trends in the United States and around the world. At the Globe, where he served as deputy managing editor until 1996, he directed coverage of the first Gulf War and the end of the Cold War. Ashbrook received the Livingston Prize for National Reporting and was a 1996 fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation.