Kelly Reichardt's new film *The Mastermind*, starring Josh O'Connor, centers on a bumbling art heist at the fictional Framingham Museum of Art, where thieves steal paintings by American modernist Arthur Dove. Set in the early 1970s against the backdrop of Vietnam War protests, the film is deliberately slow-paced, drawing criticism from some early viewers who called it boring. Reichardt based the story on a real 1972 theft at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, where robbers took four paintings by Rembrandt, Picasso, and Gauguin, worth about $7.72 million today. Two high school girls accidentally witnessed the heist, and a guard was shot, though all paintings were recovered within weeks.
The article matters because it highlights how a relatively obscure, non-violent art heist—one that didn't make ARTnews's list of greatest art thefts—inspired a major filmmaker's work. It contrasts the real event's quick resolution with more famous unsolved cases like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft, and examines how Reichardt's understated style subverts typical heist-film tension. The piece also underscores the enduring cultural fascination with art crime, even when the stolen works are less iconic than those targeted in blockbuster heists.