More on the school teacher art thieves

May 19, 2024 3:27 PM

A stolen Willem de Kooning painting was found in the home of Rita and Jerry Alter after they died (a very worth reading previously). New evidence suggests that's not all they stole.

Two more stolen paintings have been identified: Joseph Henry Sharp’s Indian Boy In Full Dress (sic) and Victor Higgins's Aspens. They were auctioned along with the couple's other belongings after their deaths (Artnet Article | Wayback Machine Link).

Lou Schachter, an independent researcher (really, he's better described as a curious writer who's good at Internet research) examined some old photographs of the Alter's home and identified two paintings in the background. After some persistent online searching Schachter identified the paintings as having been stolen from the Harwood (Medium article | Wayback Machine link).

The two paintings were stolen from The Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico on March 20, 1985, about 6 months before the de Kooning painting was stolen from the University of Arizona on November 28, 1985. Both heists used very similar methods -- a couple entered the museum and one distracted a guard while the other went to the second floor and hid the paintings under their coat and left (ibid).

The FBI's art crimes unit has confirmed that it is looking into the case of the Harwood paintings (Guardian article | Wayback Machine link).

posted by OrangeDisk (8 comments total)

Oh this is a fantastic post. Right up my alley. The art world abounds in scoundrels and drama. This fits the bill. And de Kooning is a hero of mine. We have some of his works in the Buffalo AKG art museum.The ne plus ultra of abstract expressionism.
posted by Czjewel at 4:36 PM on May 19 [2 favorites]

Also worth noting that there is a 2022 documentary called The Thief Collector on the subject that hints at some potentially darker crimes that may have been perpetuated beyond just art theft.
posted by jeremias at 4:48 PM on May 19 [5 favorites]

jeremiad. Must watch!
posted by Czjewel at 5:16 PM on May 19

And de Kooning is a hero of mine. We have some of his works in the Buffalo AKG art museum.

Czjewel Gotham News, which ia at the Buffalo AKG Museum, is probably my favourite painting of the 20th century.
I was fortunate enough to see the massive retrospective at the MoMA in 2011 and it was stunning.

Thanks for posting this; it seems like things will just keep getting uncovered with these 2. At some point I imagine a film, played as a weird romantic comedy of a sort, will be made as well.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 5:58 PM on May 19 [2 favorites]

I feel like art stealers and those women who befriend pregnant women to cut them open and steal their babies have a similar obsession.
posted by atomicstone at 12:42 AM on May 20

After reading all the previouslies... did they ever find the daughter? Prove the son was an accomplice? And if the son was an accomplice, why did he let all this stolen artwork go in a $2,000 estate sale organized by the nephew?
posted by subdee at 12:27 PM on May 20

I believe the son is in a mental health facility for the rest of his life.
posted by nestor_makhno at 1:23 PM on May 20

I don't understand why they didn't cap off the old septic tank, or whatever it is to decommission it, and have a new one installed elsewhere. (That's a detail from the doc jeremias linked to.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:01 PM on May 22