Digital billboards offer $5m reward for art theft clues
Digital billboards in the U.S. earned their public-service stripes assisting in the search for missing persons and fugitive criminals. But the FBI in Massachusetts is now broadening their role by using the medium in an appeal for information about a stolen painting.
Clear Channel Outdoor has donated spots on two billboards in Stoneham and Lawrence, Massachusetts, to publicise a $5m reward in the hunt for Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, stolen two decades ago from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in nearby Boston.
The spots will run for four weeks on the two billboards, which between them are passed by about 190,000 individuals each day.
Stephen Ross, president of Clear Channel Outdoor’s Boston business, said: “It’s a unique way to get the message out to the masses. A $5m reward should be enough to entice a person to share some information.’’
Digital billboards have become popular with the FBI as well as local law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. after leading to the arrest of many suspects. Most recently, police in Tupelo, Mississippi said they had located five of their most wanted thanks to ads on a trio of billboards.
But this is believed to be the first time that they have been used to seek intelligence on an art heist.
In what is regarded as the biggest art theft in the country’s history, two criminals disguised as police officers made off in March 1990 with the Rembrandt – the artist’s only seascape, dating from 1633 – as well as a dozen other masterpieces.
www.clearchanneloutdoor.com
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