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special section: the gardner grows

Confessions of a former Gardner Museum night guard

Alone with masterpieces, and nothing but a flashlight as a source of illumination.

By Geoff Rockwell

 |  Globe correspondnet  

  January 15, 2012

In 1986 and ’87 I worked as a security guard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. For most of that time I was a night guard. We weren’t allowed to draw while on duty, but I always carried a small sketchbook, and when I was alone I’d draw studies of the artworks that impressed me. Among those were Vermeer’s “The Concert’’ and Rembrandt’s “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee’’ - two of the masterpieces stolen in 1990, in what remains the biggest unsolved art heist in history, with a total value of $500 million.

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