Harvard Lampoon Plays Up Isabell Stewart Gardner Museum Heist Ad

While millions are riveted by Sunday’s seven-minute jewelry heist of Napoleonic jewels at the Louvre , another major sizable snatching, the 1990 break-in at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, resurfaced in the news in a different way.

As far as college pranks go, the one The Harvard Lampoon orchestrated was pricey. In a full-page advertisement in the Thursday issue of The New York Times, the pranksters at the university’s 149-year-old humor magazine wrote a lengthy erroneous explanation under the headline “Harvard Lampoon Students Responsible for Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist.” The Harvard students’ made-up heist was of an oak cabinet with a weight-transfer device from the museum’s Dutch Room that is part of a matching pair in The Lampoon’s headquarters that was a