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 ...
I hate to imagine the back trouble she will have in later years.
For $160 million who needs taste.
It could very well have been stolen before and left to the museum. Such stories are not uncommon.
For example, a Holocaust-surviving couple in their nineties residing in San Diego just 10 years ago were called by their son in NYC, Their son had received a call from a friend who was traveling in Spain and was in Madrid looking at tourist sites. This friend had gone into the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza where there was a new exhibit of impressionist paintings that had never been exhibited before. The friend called the son in NYC and said “you’re not going to believe what I saw!”.
When the elderly couple was driven out of Germany into a camp for Jews, their apartment was ransacked by Nazis and the artwork they had collected was taken. One of the pieces of art was a masterpiece by Pizarro. The elderly couple had kept photos of all their artwork. They had submitted copies of the photos years before to the German government for recovery.
The friend had seen the photos kept by the family and in the Madrid museum, he saw the Pizarro worth then about $50 million.
Heine Thyssen was a German-Swiss shipping magnate whose art collection hidden away in Lucerne rivaled that of Queen Elizabeth’s. The Pizarro had come from his estate left to his gold-digger wife Baroness Tita who was Miss Spain in 1961.
In the art world, there are a lot of ‘title’ issues. Just because a piece hangs in a museum, it does not mean title is clean.
If I was reporting the background story on this, I would definitely consider investigating along these lines.
Nobody would be able to tell if you hit the work of "art" or not.
Some modern art I get. Some, I don’t. This is the latter. I wouldn’t pay a penny over $50 million for it. And it better have a really nice frame.
“Where is that son of a b——!” /remake of Thomas Crown
I remember reading that story. I saw the photographs. I guess it’s wise to keep photos of your valuables.
I’ma proud cretin mind you!
Have to say I would have gone for a Monet or a Sargent but to each their own.
Yes, could very well be.
Also sounds like an inside job.
Did it disappear after a night of drinking with friends? Maybe you gave it away. I would start by checking your Buddie’s garage’s walls. Probably a good story behind it.
I wouldn’t pay 99 cents for that
Would you take eight Boyscout cookies and a whistle? Hat tip to Maxwell Smart.
The FBI or Interpol should examine the documentation of all their trips to see if any of them correspond to any art thefts in the respective countries they visited.
They obviously know art since they kept the painting rather than put it up for sale......
There has to be a black market for stolen artifacts but I'll be dared if I know how to go about entering it to sell something.
I would. Then I would find some rich sucker to sell it too. I figure I’d net $159,000,000.01. Not bad.
“One of the pieces of art was a masterpiece by Pizarro”
Must be indeed very rare.
And stop looking at the boobs! Art is so much more than the painting's bodacious tatas!
Sexist!
Yikes how to describe that piece? Clashing eye noise on canvas. Bigger question is who would plop down a $160 large for that zig zagged lines of collisions?
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