Video of massive art heist released

By Doug Most, Globe Staff

What does an art heist look like? It looks like this. If only such video existed of the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.

And in case you missed the details about this recent incredible, rare, daring, art heist at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, Globe art critic Sebastian Smee wrote a very personal piece about one of the stolen works.

In a nutshell, seven works by Picasso, Matisse, Gauguin, Monet, Meyer de Haan, and Lucian Freud, which were reported to be worth a total of about $130 million, disappeared last week from the Kunsthal museum. They were there as part of a temporary exhibition drawn from the collection of businessman Willem Cordia.

Museum officials said Monday the thieves took advantage of an electronic locking system that is activated after an alarm is triggered, but then deactivates shortly afterward for safety reasons, for just a few minutes. When the electronic system was deactivated, the thieves apparently broke a lock on an emergency door, and rushed in and ran back out in less than two minutes. That was plenty of time to vanish before the police, who arrived about three minutes later.