The walls of my home are covered with art. I have works by artists like my sister-in-law Betsey, the ex-wife of my friend George, outsider artists from St. Francis House. I also have prints from my travels. A couple of charming water colors, done by a friend of my mother as an engagement present. I novelty dishtowel I embroidered when I was seven. A print of the Miss Worcester (my home town) diner; a companion print of the Miss Bellows Fall (my husband’s home town) diner. A late 19th century poster. And other pieces that, over the years, I found interesting and struck my fancy.
What I don’t have on my walls are any stolen works of art by 20th century masters that are worth over a million bucks.
I did once have a piece of stolen – well, art isn’t the right word exactly – craft: an oddball haute relief of a sailing ship that either I or my roommate removed from the wall of a Boston tourist-trap restaurant when we waitressed there nearly 50 years ago. I can’t remember what prompted us to take it. Last night on the job? Rotten tips? Sick of battling rats? (Letting out a yelp if you spotted a rat when there were any customers in the house was a firing offense.)
In any case, we clipped that “art”, but it’s not on my walls. It hangs instead in my sister Kath’s dining room. A family conversation piece.
Oh, I suppose we should return it. Just drop it off with a note. Or bring it in. But maybe if we dropped it off, they’d offer us a free meal. It’s been nearly 50 years since I worked there (and last ate there – choosing what I ate very carefully), and I don’t imagine it’s the rat hole it was then. (At night, when we were cleaning up, the manager would on occasion whip out a handgun and shoot at the rat holes to keep the rats at bay. If rats scurried out while we were cleaning up, we could leave things and pick it up again in the morning. One time there was a sink clog in the kitchen. The dish boy reached in and plucked out a drowned rat.) Still…
Anyway, maybe this will all get cleared up posthumously. Kath and Rick have so much wonderful art, maybe no one will want the cornball carved sailing ship. Maybe someone will recognize it as the sort of “art” that covers the walls of ye olde Boston restaurant and feel compelled to return it.
Time will tell, and I’m not likely to be around for the telling.
But I’m not losing any sleep over it. I still feel guilty about writing a “you stink” note to my friend Susan and signing it Ginny W. That was when I was seven. But the purloined art? Meh… (The closest thing I found to it on eBay – and it was pretty damned close – goes for $28.)
I do have to wonder whether Jerry and Rita Alter lost any sleep over the purloined art that hung in their bedroom for many years.
Theirs wasn’t a $28 wood carved 3D picture of a sailing ship. It was a Willem de Kooning painting, “Woman-Ochre”, worth a cool $160M.
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…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…
Sensing that something wasn’t right, the guard walked upstairs. There, he saw an empty frame where de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre” had hung.(Source: Washington Post)
There were no security cameras back in that day, but there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that points to Jerry and Rita, a couple of quiet, unassuming retired educators. Among the “points to” evidence is a story by Jerry from a self-published collection that tells the tale of a stolen emerald that only two pairs of eyes can gaze on. Hmmmm. (The de Kooning hung in such a way that it could only be seen by someone in the Alters’ bedroom when the door was closed. Hmmmm.)
Rita Alter outlived her husband by a few years, but when she died in 2017 and antiques dealer “spotted ‘a great, cool midcentury painting.’ They bought it, along with the rest of the Alters’ estate, for $2,000.”
‘A great, cool midcentury painting,’ I’d say.
It does remind me of a work of art owned by a friend.
Years ago, when visiting his cottage on the Cape, I was struck by a piece. It was not great, but there was something about it, and I kept coming back to it. I made a comment to my friend about how arresting the piece was. He laughed. He’d gotten it at a garage sale for a couple of bucks, and found out later that Edward Hopper had lived and worked there. It was no “Nighthawks”, no light house, no NY street scene. Still, there was something about it. (Haven’t thought of it in years. I’ll have to ask my friend if he ever got it evaluated. If not, he should find out when Antiques Roadshow is coming to town.)
Anyway, the Tucson antiques dealer put it up in his shop. It wasn’t there long:
…before the first person “came in and walked up to it and looked at it and said, ‘I think this is a real de Kooning,’…Then another customer said the same thing. And another.
At which point, the dealer awayed to the google and figured out he might well have the missing de Kooning on his hands and on his walls.
He called the museum, which came and collected it, and had it authenticated. Talk about jumping for joy.
The FBI is tracking things down, but, as I said, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests the Alters may have been responsible for the heist.
Everyone who knew them remembered them as “nice people.”
I guess I’m proof positive that “nice people” can pull off art thefts. But I’m wondering what Jerry and Rita Alter were thinking, what they were saying to each other, as they sat there in bed, looking at their $1.6M de Kooning.
Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
No comments:
Post a Comment