“Woman-Ochre” by Willem de Kooning. (Courtesy of University of Arizona Museum of Art)
Posted on 08/05/2018 9:50:52 AM PDT by BBell
Jerry and Rita Alter kept to themselves. They were a lovely couple, neighbors in the small New Mexico town of Cliff would later tell reporters. But no one knew much about them.
They may have been hiding a decades-old secret, pieces of which are now just emerging.
Among them:
After the couple died, a stolen Willem de Kooning painting with an estimated worth of $160 million was discovered in their bedroom.
More than 30 years ago, that same painting disappeared the day after Thanksgiving from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson.
And Wednesday, the Arizona Republic reported that a family photo had surfaced, showing that the day before the painting vanished, the couple was, in fact, in Tucson.
The next morning, a man and a woman would walk into the museum and then leave 15 minutes later. A security guard had unlocked the museum’s front door to let a staff member into the lobby, curator Olivia Miller told NPR. The couple followed. Since the museum was about to open for the day, the guard let them in.
The man walked up to the museum’s second floor while the woman struck up a conversation with the guard. A few minutes later, he came back downstairs, and the two abruptly left, according to the NPR interview and other media reports.
Sensing that something wasn’t right, the guard walked upstairs. There, he saw an empty frame where de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre” had hung.
At the time, the museum had no surveillance cameras. Police found no fingerprints. One witness described seeing a rust-color sports car drive away but didn’t get the license plate number. For 31 years, the frame remained empty.
In 2012, Jerry Alter passed away. His widow, Rita Alter, died five years later at 81.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Woman-Ochre” by Willem de Kooning. (Courtesy of University of Arizona Museum of Art)
$160 million for that?
Not something I’d want on my wall, but then I prefer rifles to paintings for wall hangings anyway
Kept in the bedroom? Nightmare fuel.
I will vouch for myself....I have no art taste, but this is something that I could paint with a half-bottle of rum in my system. How it’s worth $100-million is a mystery to me.
My gut feeling is that they had viewed the tasteless art 30 years ago, and just thought for a joke....they’d steal it. They obviously knew the value.
160 million....for that.....words fail me
As Kryten once observed “I think I feel a Jackson Polluck coming on.”
I could do that!
If I dd would I get $160mm? How about $80mm? Would you belive $8mm? Ok, how about $8 thousand?
Insurance fraud.
Yes. I see hooters.
I'd hit that painting.
OMG, do you mean to tell me that they stole Michelle Obama's Official White House Portrait?
Art-lovers? As in, saving the world from that anti-art horror?
How big is this painting? I know his work pretty well and often those pieces are pretty big. You just can’t put it in your purse and walk off. So that part of the story confuses me.
It’s not a bad de Kooning: action painting, guys. Yes, and the hooters are obvious. He worked along with Pollock. There is a good deal of energy and complexity of space in these works, but, yes, it helps to take a course in modern art to really understand it (if not necessarily like it).
There's a possible explanation for them having it....a sex aid, eh?
/sarcasm
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