The Mastermind Takes Inspiration From a Real-Life 1970s Art Museum Heist 

Director Kelly Reichardt’s new film, The Mastermind, is a heist film set in the 1970s that follows actor Josh O’Connor as James Blaine Mooney, an unemployed husband and father of two who steals from a nearby art museum, as a way of trying to make ends meet for his family. He spends the weeks leading up to the heist casing the museum and at one point, he subtly steals a small wooden figure, before slipping it into his sunglasses case, later placing it into his wife’s purse.

In the film, four artworks by American artist Arthur Dove, are stolen: Willow Tree; Yellow, Blue-Green and Brown; Tree Forms; and Tanks & Snowbanks from the fictional Framingham Museum of Art. While the museum is fictional, Reichardt chose the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library in Columbus, Indiana, for exterior shots, while the interiors were all crafted for the movie on a set.

The actual heist that inspired this particular movie is one that occurred at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts in 1972. This was the first museum robbery at gunpoint. Similar to the film, this art heist also involved the robbery of four artworks: Mother and Child by Picasso, St. Bartholomew by Rembrandt, and two Gauguin creations: The Brooding Woman and Head of a Woman. Just a few weeks later, all of these works were recovered in Rhode Island, at a hayloft. 

A man named Florian “Al” Monday masterminded the Worcester Art Museum heist, hiring two other men to carry it out. A security guard was shot and wounded but survived. All three men were later caught. Similarly, The Mastermind shows Mooney enlisting two men to partake in the heist; no one was harmed, although, a teenage girl who witnesses the heist is held at gunpoint in the film. Although Mooney orchestrated the heist for monetary purposes, Monday was motivated by the sense of accomplishment, once stating, “To an art lover, possessing a Rembrandt can be likened to winning the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Stanley Cup all at once.” 

In addition to the aforementioned Arthur Dove works, The Mastermind also includes paintings by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and other notable artists. Within the fictional museum’s permanent gallery, viewers can see Sargent’s Ellen Peabody Endicott, Street in Venice, and En Route Pour La Peche in the film, along with Cassatt’s Child in a Straw Hat. As for Church, both Niagara and The Heart of the Andes are on display at the Framingham, while Cole has four total works on view: The Voyage of Life: Youth; The Voyage of Life: Old Age; View on the Catskill—Early Autumn; and The Oxbow.

All of the artworks in the film, both stolen and non-stolen, are reproductions, except the cat paintings on display in a boarding house; these were painted by American artist Irene Nedelay.

The Mastermind will be available in theaters beginning October 17.