$10M reward for tip in 1990 art heist set to expire at midnight on New Year's

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When most people are ringing in the new year, a museum security official will be waiting for his phone to ring.

At midnight, the $10 million reward for information leading to the recovery of 13 pieces of art that were stolen from The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 will expire, but the museum’s director of security Anthony Amore is hoping a tipster will make his year.

The search for the 13 masterpieces, which include paintings by Rembrandt and Manet among others, has spanned three decades, dating back to March 1990, when two suspects dressed up as Boston police officers gained access to the museum, tied up two security guards there and methodically stole the various pieces of art, cutting the painting out of their frames. The empty frames remain on the walls of the museum to this day.

Museum officials will not release individual valuations for the works of art, but estimate that all told, the 13 stolen pieces are worth more than $500 million.

The privately funded reward, provided by the museum and its board, had been set at $5 million for years but was doubled in May in the hopes of drawing out any possibly reluctant tipsters.

“Much of the strategy was to create a sense of urgency. We want our paintings back. Twenty-seven years later, we want them back now,” Kathy Sharpless, the museum’s director of communications, told ABC News.

The bigger reward did generate some new interest, Amore said.

“We received a number of good leads, good calls from concerned citizens and lots of theories from people as well, but as you can imagine we're not interested in theories. We're just interested in facts that lead us to a recovery,” Amore said.

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