LOST AND FOUND: Stolen painting worth an estimated $165 million recovered more than 30 years after it went missing
A painting appraised at $165 million is back where it belongs after it was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum Of Art more than 30 years ago in a theft that is still a mystery to investigators, according to ABC affiliate WFAA.
“If this painting could talk, she would have a magnificent story to tell us,” University of Arizona Police Chief Brian Seastone told WFAA.
It’s a tale that starts with a Willem de Kooning oil on canvas original called "Woman Ochre." The painting hung proudly at the university for more than 20 years before it was stolen in 1985.
According to WFAA, a couple somehow talked their way into the museum before it was open for the day. The woman distracted the museum security guard while the man walked upstairs and used a blade to cut the painting from its frame.
It is believed that the painting was rolled up and tucked under one of the thieves’ coats, according to WFAA. There were no surveillance cameras at the museum at the time.
“It was a very traumatic event for the institution and the people that lived through it,” Meg Hagyard, UAMA interim director, told WFAA.
Where did the painting go?
“If you look at art across the country, the world, that’s been stolen, there’s a couple reasons it gets found,” Seastone told WFAA. “Either somebody dies and someone comes across it, it gets sold, or someone brings some information forward. One of the three happened.”
After Rita and Jerome “Jerry” Alter passed away in Cliff, New Mexico, their nephew Ron Roseman executed their estate. That included selling their art to an antique dealer for $2,000.
Among that art collection was a painting the Alters kept tucked away behind their bedroom door: the de Kooning original.
Once it was put on display, customers at Manzanita Ridge Antiques in Silver City, New Mexico, started recognizing the painting almost immediately, according to WFAA. By the time a third customer asked about it, the shop co-owner knew the painting needed to be kept under lock and key.
“We were afraid someone would bash it or flick paint off it so that’s when we decided we would pick it up and stick it somewhere safe,” David Van Auker, the antique shop co-owner, told WFAA, “and the only door we had in the store that locked was the bathroom door. So, we kind of slipped it in next to the toilet and locked the door.”
Van Auker searched the internet and found a 2015 article in USA Today about a stolen painting that looked a lot like the painting in his shop, so he called the University of Arizona’s museum.
