04 Sep Collector’s Notebook: Reuniting With Stolen Masterpieces

In 1985, the Harwood Foundation in Taos, New Mexico, now known as the Harwood Museum of Art, served a dual purpose as both the town’s museum and library. Throughout the adobe building’s two floors, paintings by Taos Society artists hung beneath the vigas on lime-washed plaster walls.

Librarian Tracy McCallum’s desk was situated on the first floor with a clear sightline to the Harwood’s entrance. On a mild afternoon in March, he was at his desk when a woman requested a wheelchair and assistance getting up the old elevator to the second floor. McCallum obliged, showed her around, and then helped her back downstairs on the elevator. He then returned to his desk. There were many visitors that day, none of whom McCallum later recalled as standing out, except for one: a man in a long black raincoat.

Near closing time, David Caffey, the Harwood’s director at the time, walked upstairs for a final check, stepped into the gallery, and saw immediately that there, on the north wall, was a blank space where a painting had been. He turned around and saw that to the south, the bottom piece of a frame was still stuck to the wall, but there was no painting.

In the police report, McCallum recalled how the woman in the wheelchair needed his help and then later, how an Anglo male, 40 to 50 years old, slightly bald, approximately 5 feet 8 inches tall, wearing a long black raincoat, looked at him, quickly turned, and exited the museum. That man stood out, McCallum said, because he walked with his hands in his coat pockets, as if he were holding something underneath.

Harwood curator David Witt was not in his office that day; ironically, he was in Santa Fe attending a seminar on museum security. Witt didn’t learn of the theft until he got back that evening. How could someone walk in and take two paintings off the walls in broad daylight, and no one noticed?

Witt notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) the next day and contacted galleries, dealers, and art associations, letting them know of the theft. For years after, Witt scanned auction catalogues in hopes that Oklahoma Cheyenne aka Indian Boy in Full Dress (circa 1915) by Joseph Henry Sharp and Aspens (circa 1932) by Victor Higgins would turn up; but they never did — at least, not during his tenure.

Joseph Henry Sharp, Oklahoma Cheyenne aka Indian Boy in Full Dress | Oil on Canvas | 18 x 12 inches | c. 1915 | Gift of Read Mullan. Collection of Harwood Museum of Art

Six months after the Sharp and Higgins were stolen, Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre was cut out of its frame at the University of Arizona Museum of Art gallery in Tucson and smuggled out of the museum in broad daylight. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and the museum was quiet, except for the woman who chatted with the staff and the man in a long black raincoat.

It’s estimated that approximately 50,000 artworks are stolen each year, fueling the nearly $8 billion black market for stolen art. You might think that these crimes are done for financial gain — and many are. But Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI Art Crime Team, believes there are three types of art thieves. The first commits a theft of opportunity; basically, they’re shoplifters who get a thrill. The second kind steals for money, and these thieves make up the lion’s share. However, some steal art for their own benefit.

“They feel like, since they care about it, they are entitled to have these pieces,” Wittman says in “The Thief Collector,” a 2022 documentary. “They’re the most dangerous. And they’re the hardest to capture.”

Wittman says these people are so difficult to track down because once they have the artwork, they hide it and keep it purely for their own enjoyment. “And those things,” he says, “go away for many years before they come back.”

Nemo dat quod non habet is a handy Latin phrase to remember when buying art at auction or from someone you don’t know all that well, like the guy offering a great deal on a Rembrandt from the trunk of his car. Also known as the “nemo dat rule,” it translates to “No one can give what they do not have.” In other words, you can’t own stolen art no matter how much you pay for it.

Don’t panic if you unwittingly buy something that was stolen — which, given the number of objects stolen each year, might be easier than you think. You’re not in trouble unless you refuse to return the stolen goods once you are aware they were taken, which legally falls under the “demand and refusal rule.” When and how this rule is applied can vary from state to state, but essentially, the clock on returning stolen art starts when the original owner discovers its whereabouts.

As you might expect, there are lots of gray areas that influence the outcome in these cases. For example, did the person whose art was stolen file a police report? Did they notify the FBI? And did they list the stolen art on international loss registries?

When the Sharp and Higgins were pilfered from the Harwood, Juniper Leherissey, current executive director of the museum, says, “David Witt made a large effort within our regional network of museums and galleries to notify them of the stolen works, as well as all of the formal channels: letters to Interpol, the art loss registry, police, and others, so we have all that documentation.”

But that was 40 years ago, and even Leherissey, who grew up in Taos, wasn’t aware that among the 6,500 works of art in the Harwood collection, two had gone missing. Interestingly, the insurance company the museum worked with back then has since gone out of business. But still, the trail had been established.

As collectors, the Harwood and University of Arizona Museum of Art thefts illustrate why you need to take provenance seriously and double-check anything that gives you pause. Look for records of who the original owner was and all the subsequent owners, museum exhibitions, and so on that provide assurances that the piece you’re interested in can be linked to honest brokers.

Beyond that, another safeguard is to only purchase work from reputable dealers and auction houses, who will verify provenance — although, throughout history, there have been examples where dubious provenance was either overlooked or concealed. And it’s also always possible that mistakes are made, given that thieves can be crafty when trying to unload stolen work through a reputable, established dealer.

On the 13th anniversary of the theft of the de Kooning, the University of Arizona Museum of Art curated an exhibit that featured the empty frame from which the painting was sliced out. The accompanying text provided details of the heist, and publicity from the show renewed interest in the crime, including that of amateur sleuth Lou Schachter, a retired corporate consultant who enjoyed researching art crimes.

Schachter was intrigued by the de Kooning heist and visited the museum in 2014, thinking he would soon delve into that crime. The de Kooning, however, surfaced before he got to it.

Enter Rita and Jerome “Jerry” Alter, former schoolteachers who lived a quiet life in Cliff, New Mexico. They owned a modest home and spent their retirement years traveling to far-flung places. At family gatherings, they shared photos and stories of their latest trips, and in their home, they displayed mementos such as weavings, small sculptures, and paintings collected along the way.

Jerome died in 2012, and Rita in 2017. Their estate was left to relatives who, overwhelmed by the volume of things the couple owned, decided to donate some of their belongings to a local garden club and sell the rest to an antique shop in Silver City, New Mexico.

After reviewing the mostly Southwestern objects donated to them, the head of the garden club began to think that some of those items might have real value. She contacted the Scottsdale Art Auction and consigned several paintings and sculptures to them for a sale in 2018. One painting the garden club didn’t want, however, was a strange and disturbing piece that hung in the Alters’ bedroom behind a door. That went to the antique shop.

From here, the story takes an amazing turn. The Manzanita Ridge Furniture and Antiques store owners paid a little more than $2,000 for the estate. When they began sorting through the objects they’d bought sight unseen, they came upon the painting from behind the door in the Alters’ bedroom. Shopowner David Van Auker didn’t know what it was and so brought it back to the shop, leaning it against a wall. A local walked in, took one look at it, and asked Van Auker if it was real — was the painting a real de Kooning?

A quick Google search turned up all Van Auker needed to know. He called the University of Arizona Museum of Art and spoke with curator Olivia Miller, telling her that he wasn’t crazy, but he believed he had found Woman-Ochre.

“I’ll never forget that moment,” Miller says in “The Thief Collector.” “I asked him to email me photos of the painting detailing the signature. Every time we opened a photo, we said, ‘How do we get to Silver City? This is the painting!’”

After contacting the university police department, however, the curators were told not to talk to Van Auker anymore, that they would take it from there. So, they stopped responding to Van Auker’s calls and texts.

In Silver City, however, word of the de Kooning had spread. “People were coming in, saying we want to see the de Kooning,” Van Auker says of the painting that was estimated to be worth more than $100 million. Unnerved, he took the painting home and hid it behind his sofa. He then pulled a couple of guns from his safe. “People are killed for less than a $100-million painting,” says Rich Johnson, Van Auker’s business partner.

The antiques dealers just wanted the de Kooning gone. At the museum, the curators, too, were panicking. What if Van Auker changed his mind and sold the painting out from under them? Finally, Van Auker left a voicemail for Miller saying that all he wanted was for the painting to go back to the museum and that he was freaking out: “Somebody,” he says, “might cut my throat for that painting. Keep this on record: I don’t want to hold it hostage. I don’t want a ransom. I want you to have the painting back.”

To the great relief of everyone, the museum staff was finally permitted to pick up the de Kooning in 2022. It had sustained considerable damage from being sliced from its frame, rolled, and smuggled out under the thief’s coat, and was sent to senior conservators at the Getty Museum for restoration. Happily, it’s now back home at the museum and on display, once again.

Remember our amateur art sleuth, Schachter? He had a hunch that Woman-Ochre was not the only stolen artwork in the Alters’ home. He reached out to Van Auker and asked for his thoughts. In a story for Medium, Schachter recounts his conversation with Van Auker, who told him that the FBI stated none of the works sold at auction were listed in its stolen art database.

But that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t stolen. Schachter wondered about three pieces in particular that the garden club sent to the Scottsdale Art Auction. In the documentary, there were photos of the interior of the Alters’ home and an interview with a woman from the garden club who said there were paintings by Higgins and Sharp, as well as a Frederic Remington, an Allan Houser, and an R.C. Gorman. Using photos from the documentary, Schachter started searching auction records looking for matches. That’s when he discovered two paintings sold through the auction house on April 7, 2018, that appeared to be exact matches to the pieces stolen from the Harwood in March 1985.

Schachter reached out to Leherissey to let her know he thought a Sharp and a Higgins that were auctioned in 2018 belonged to the Harwood. “That’s really the first time it came to my attention,” Leherissey says. “That was December of 2023. I reached out to my collections manager and was like, ‘Is this for real?’” Sure enough, her manager found the file on the stolen paintings and the documentation from 40 years ago.

The Harwood team gathered their provenance for the paintings and created a dossier; then they contacted the FBI’s art crimes unit to ask if they would take the case. “The FBI decides whether to take a case based on various factors,” Leherissey says. “Luckily, they did take ours; otherwise, I don’t even know how we would’ve managed. We would’ve had to get lawyers involved, subpoena people, identify the buyers, and figure out how to secure the works back. Without the FBI’s support, it would have been very challenging.”

Thanks to the FBI’s involvement, the Higgins and Sharp were returned to the Harwood Museum in great condition in May 2025. As for the buyers, one who paid $52,650 for the Sharp and the other who paid $93,600 for the Higgins, Leherissey doesn’t know if they got their money back. “A collector who inadvertently purchases a stolen artwork may get some compensation,” Leherissey says, adding that auction houses often have legal protections in place for unfortunate situations like this. Due to the ongoing investigation, the Scottsdale Art Auction said it could not comment at this time.

These days, the Harwood’s security systems are greatly enhanced and include cameras, sensors, alarms, and gallery guards — all things we patrons hardly notice anymore. When asked if she thought the 1985 Harwood theft was a test run for other heists, Leherissey says, “Maybe they’d done it a million times before; they seemed to have their game down. They would even put on costumes. But yes, it was very intentional. They were trying to steal from small organizations that might be more vulnerable.”

Leherissey even wonders about other objects from the Alter documentary that wound up at auction. “There was a Remington, an Allan Houser, and an R.C. Gorman — three bronzes. We had the R.C. Gorman Gallery in Taos at that time. Did they just walk up the street and take the next thing? We don’t know how many other things they stole. What we do know is that they funded a lifestyle that was not sustainable on their apparent incomes.”

For Leherissey, getting their paintings back is more than just a mystery solved. “We have such a rich art community. Both of these artists were so much a part of the Taos community and the Harwood. Victor Higgins was on our founding board, and he gifted some of the most significant of his works to us directly. Those paintings not only came home to us, but the artists are home now, too.”

Curator and writer Rose Fredrick shares her extensive knowledge about the inner workings of the art market on her blog, The Incurable Optimist, at rosefredrick.com.

Sidebar:

Art Heists

What to do if you accidentally purchase a stolen artwork or one goes missing from your walls, according to the FBI

If you are a victim of an art theft or discover you’ve purchased a stolen work, start by calling the local police. If the crime is within FBI jurisdiction — the object has traveled across state lines or was stolen from a museum — then contact the FBI. A local FBI Art Crime Team member will begin the investigation.

According to the Santa Fe office of the FBI Art Crime Team, they recover paintings by following investigative leads and relying on the cooperation of all parties to recover and return stolen artworks, as was the case with the Harwood Museum of Art’s paintings.

Protecting your art collection starts with keeping a detailed inventory of your valuables. To safeguard against purchasing stolen art, perform due diligence on any artwork you’re considering, only purchase through reputable dealers, and always check the provenance.