Art Heist at Broward Center for the Performing Arts
An innovative entertainment event like none other, Art Heist puts gumshoes right in the middle of a real-life art caper. In five locations outside the Broward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Art Heist is a true-crime walking show that sends audiences hunting for clues. What visitors will discover is not far from the real events that inspired Art Heist. They took place in March 1990 at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where two thieves disguised as police officers stole 13 works of art valued at $500 million. Paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Manet are among the missing paintings. Now it’s up to Art Heist’s amateur investigators to solve the crime and find the perpetrators, all while interacting with a group of criminals, con artists and other characters who may know more than they let on. Visitors in socially distanced groups move through five walkable and wheelchair-accessible locations around the Broward Center in search of clues and shady characters. Each detective squad consists of up to 35 people, who begin their journey at the Broward Center box office here in one of South Florida’s most spectacular and most visited cultural destinations.
About Art Heist
Presented by the Broward Center for the Performing Arts and Right Angle Productions, Art Heist puts would-be detectives in the middle of a true-life crime drama. This unique theatrical caper is based on real events. On the night of March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as police officers told the guards at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that they were there to investigate reports of a disturbance. Instead, the two cunning criminals made off with 13 works of art with a combined value of half a billion dollars. Now audiences will be the ones trying to crack the case thanks to this fun outdoor experience, brainchild of Right Angle cofounder and executive producer Justin Sudds, writer-director TJ Dawe and physical theater specialist Ming Hudson. Visitors will also encounter local actors performing the roles of key figures in the crime - a roster that includes art experts, a possible inside man, slimy con artists and the self-proclaimed “Greatest Art Thief of All-Time.”
