Second Soup Attack on Van Gogh Painting After Sentencing of Original Protesters by U.K. Climate Activists

Two Van Gogh Paintings had canned soup thrown at them by three activists at the "Lovers and Poets" exhibition at the National Gallery in London on February September 27. Photo: Just Stop Oil.

On September 27, 2024, three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022

In the latest incident the three activists entered the gallery at approximately 2:30 PM, targeting both "Sunflowers" (1888 and 1889) during a prominent exhibition showcasing Van Gogh's works. The paintings are part of a significant triptych, with the targeted 1888 piece being especially notable for its cultural value. One of the activists, Phil Green, declared to gallery visitors that future generations would view these recent imprisonments as a testament to the activists' fight for justice and environmental preservation.

Image of Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland

The sentencing of Plummer and Holland, who were found guilty of criminal damage after they caused an estimated £10,000 worth of damage to the gold frame of the "Sunflowers" painting. During their sentencing, Judge Christopher Hehir condemned their actions as arrogant, emphasizing the near irreversible damage that could have occurred had the soup penetrated the protective glass of the artwork. He highlighted that their actions warranted custodial sentences due to the severity of the potential harm, noting that the gallery staff had to immediately assess the painting for any severe damage.

The latest soup-throwing incident adds to a series of high-profile protests by climate activists, reflecting an increasing urgency within these movements. Many activists view such direct actions as necessary to raise awareness and provoke public discourse about the climate crisis and the perceived inaction of governments and corporations.

The National Gallery quickly confirmed that the paintings were unharmed, and they were removed for inspection but returned to display shortly after.

This ongoing confrontation between climate activism and legal repercussions illustrates the escalating tensions surrounding environmental issues in the U.K. as activists grapple with the implications of their protests in an increasingly polarized social and political landscape.

J.Larson

David John Voss sentenced for 5 years for the major art fraud case exploiting the famous Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau

David John Voss, 52, has been sentenced to five years in prison following his guilty plea to charges of forgery and uttering forged documents. The case, which is being described as Canada's largest art fraud investigation, involved a vast scheme to create and sell counterfeit artworks falsely attributed to the late Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.

The sentencing took place on Thursday, with Superior Court Justice Bonnie Warkentin emphasizing the profound damage inflicted on Morrisseau's legacy. The judge noted that the fraudulent activities not only aimed for economic gain but also irrevocably tarnished Morrisseau's cultural and spiritual contributions.

Image of Norval Morrisseau

Norval Morrisseau, an influential figure in Canadian art, was born in 1932 and hailed from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He is renowned for founding the Woodlands School of Art, a movement known for its vibrant and spiritual depictions of Indigenous life. Morrisseau's distinctive style features bold colors and intricate symbols rooted in Anishinaabe traditions and mythology. His work earned significant acclaim, with exhibitions held at major galleries across Canada, including Rideau Hall in Ottawa, and his pieces are celebrated for their deep cultural significance.

Morrisseau passed away in 2007 at the age of 75. His contributions to art and Indigenous culture have been recognized widely, cementing his status as one of Canada’s most revered artists. According to court proceedings, Voss orchestrated an elaborate fraud ring from 1996 to 2019. The operation involved an assembly-line process where Voss and his associates created thousands of fake Morrisseau paintings. Painters followed a 'paint by numbers' system to replicate the artist's style.

This evidence photo released by the Ontario Provincial Police in Canada shows a forgery of artwork by legendary Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau. Photo by HANDOUT / Ontario Provincial Police /AFP via Getty Images

In March 2023, eight individuals were charged in connection with the fraud ring. Gary Lamont, considered the ringleader, was sentenced to five years in prison in December 2023. Other defendants include Diane Marie Champagne, Linda Joy Tkachyk, and Benjamin Paul Morrisseau from Thunder Bay, as well as Jeffrey Gordon Cowan, James White, and David P. Bremner from other locations. Charges against Champagne were withdrawn during Thursday’s proceedings.

A piece of Indigenous artwork on a table. One of more than 1,000 paintings seized by Ontario Provincial Police in connection with an art fraud investigation involving fake paintings attributed to Norval Morrisseau. (Ontario Provincial Police)

The fraud's impact on Morrisseau's estate has been severe, with Cory Dingle, the executive director, revealing that the estate faces estimated losses of at least $100 million. Dingle called for restitution and proposed legal reforms to prevent future occurrences. He also urged for continued assistance from those involved in identifying the fake artworks.

While the Crown did not pursue restitution due to the complexities involved, Dingle emphasized the need for changes to Canadian law to better address and remedy such frauds. This case highlights the broader implications of art fraud on cultural heritage and the challenges faced in combating such crimes.

- J.Larson

A German Museum Employee Has Been Caught ‘Shamelessly’ Swapping Original Paintings for Fakes to Fund His Lavish Lifestyle

The man is said to have spent the money on a new apartment, wristwatches, and a Rolls-Royce.

Franz von Stuck, The Fairy Tale of the Frog King (1891). Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

A German museum employee has confessed to an audacious scheme, after he was caught swapping out paintings with forgeries and selling the originals to fund a luxury lifestyle. He has received a suspended prison sentence of one year and nine months and must pay back more than €60,000 ($63,500) to the unnamed German museum, the Munich District Court ordered on September 11.

The man, now aged 30, stole three paintings while working at the museum in Munich as a technician between May 2016 and April 2018. He replaced the paintings with fakes while they were in storage, consigning the originals to a Munich auction house.

The defendant allegedly used the money to pay debts and fund a luxury lifestyle, the court heard. “Among other things, he bought a new apartment, expensive wristwatches, and bought a Rolls-Royce,” read the verdict, noting that the man now showed remorse. “He stated that he had acted without thinking. He could no longer explain his behavior today.”

After replacing Franz Stuck’s Das Märchen vom Froschkönig (The Fairy Tale of the Frog King) (1891) with a forgery, the man pretended the original was a family heirloom and it was sold at Ketterer Kunst auction house in May 2017 to a Swiss gallery for €70,000 ($74,000). After auction house fees, he received $49,127.40 ($52,000).

Two more paintings that were switched out for fakes, Franz von Defregger’s Zwei Mädchen beim Holzsammeln im Gebirge (Two Girls Gathering Wood in the Mountains) and Eduard von Grützner’s Die Weinprüfung (Tasting the Wine), brought in an additional €11,490.50 ($12,700). An attempt to sell a fourth painting, Franz von Defregger’s Dirndl, at another Munich auction house was unsuccessful. The man made €60,617 ($64,000) in total.

“We have, of course, fulfilled our duty of care in full and have researched the works mentioned extensively,” a spokesperson for Ketterer Kunst told Artnet News. “We regret that the works were stolen from the museum with such high criminal energy. We cooperated closely with the LKA (Bavarian State Criminal Police Office) at an early stage and handed over all documents to solve this case.”

The unnamed German museum is currently trying to arrange for the return of the pictures, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. It apparently has many valuable German paintings languishing in storage thanks to a history of receiving bequests from local foundations and families.

“The defendant shamelessly exploited the opportunity to access the storage rooms in the employer’s buildings and sold valuable cultural assets in order to secure an exclusive standard of living for himself and to show off,” the verdict summarized.

The apparent vulnerability of the museum’s collection to theft while in storage recalls the recent scandal of a senior curator at the British Museum accused of stealing some 1,500 objects, several of which were sold for cheap on eBay. Most of these items had never been catalogued, revealing the complex challenges faced by museums tasked with keeping track of vast holdings.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/german-museum-employee-swapped-paintings-fakes-2367937Jo Lawson-Tancred, September 25, 2023

The mystery of the disappearing van Gogh

The Shanghai apartment complex that is home to Liu Hailong, the man who paid the nearly $62 million bill for the van Gogh, on March 10, 2023. After “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies” by Vincent van Gogh sold at auction in November 2014, a movie producer claimed to be the owner. It later vanished from sight, with a trail leading to Caribbean tax havens and a jailed Chinese billionaire. (The New York Times) by Michael Forsythe, Isabelle Qian, Muyi Xiao and Vivian Wang

NEW YORK, NY.- The bidding for Lot 17 started at $23 million. In the packed room at Sotheby’s in New York City, the price quickly climbed: $32 million, $42 million, $48 million. Then a new prospective buyer, calling from China, made it a contest between just two people.
On the block that evening in November 2014 were works by impressionist painters and modernist sculptors that would make the auction the most successful yet in the firm’s history. But one painting drew particular attention: “Still Life, Vase with Daisies and Poppies,” completed by Vincent van Gogh weeks before his death. Pushing the price to almost $62 million, the Chinese caller prevailed. His offer was the highest for a van Gogh still life at auction. In the discreet world of high-end art, buyers often remain anonymous. But the winning bidder, a prominent movie producer, would proclaim in interview after interview that he was the painting’s new owner.

The producer, Wang Zhongjun, was on a roll. His company had just helped bring “Fury,” the World War II movie starring Brad Pitt, to cinemas. He dreamed of making his business China’s version of The Walt Disney Co. The sale, according to Chinese media, became a national “sensation.” It was a sign — after the acquisition of a Pablo Picasso by a Chinese real estate tycoon the year before — that the country was becoming a force in the global art market. “Ten years ago, I could not have imagined purchasing a van Gogh,” Wang said in a Chinese-language interview with Sotheby’s. “After buying it, I loved it so much.” But Wang may not be the real owner at all. Two other men were linked to the purchase: an obscure middleman in Shanghai who paid Sotheby’s bill through a Caribbean shell company, and the person he answered to — a reclusive billionaire in Hong Kong.

The billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, was one of the most influential tycoons of China’s gilded age, creating a financial empire in recent decades by exploiting ties to the Communist Party elite and a new class of superrich businessmen. He also controlled a hidden offshore network of more than 130 companies holding more than $5 billion in assets, according to corporate documents obtained by The New York Times. Among them was Sotheby’s invoice for the van Gogh.

The secrecy that pervades the art world and its dealmakers — including international auction houses such as Sotheby’s — has drawn scrutiny in the years since the sale as authorities try to combat criminal activity. Large transactions often pass through murky intermediaries, and the vetting of them is opaque. Citing client confidentiality, Sotheby’s declined to comment on the purchase. Today, Xiao, 51, is a man who has fallen far. Abducted from his luxury apartment and now imprisoned in mainland China, he was convicted of bribery and other misdeeds that prosecutors claimed had threatened the country’s financial security. Meanwhile, Wang is struggling, liquidating properties as his film studio loses money each year. And the still life, according to several art experts, has been offered for private sale. For a century after van Gogh gathered flowers and placed them in an earthen vase to paint, the artwork’s provenance could be easily traced, and the piece was often exhibited in museums for visitors to admire. Now the painting has vanished from public view, its whereabouts unknown.

A Painting’s Many Lives
In May 1890, van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise, a rustic village outside Paris. Deeply depressed, he had cut off much of his left ear a year and a half earlier. His stay at an asylum had not helped. But within hours of coming to the village, he met Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, a doctor and an art enthusiast. “I’ve found in Dr. Gachet a ready-made friend and something like a new brother,” van Gogh wrote to his sister. The physician encouraged van Gogh to ignore his melancholy and focus on his paintings. He completed nearly 80 of them in two months, including “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” considered a masterpiece. He produced “Vase With Daisies and Poppies” at the physician’s home and may have given it to him in exchange for treatment, biographers say. After van Gogh’s death in July 1890, the painting passed to a Parisian collector, and then, in 1911, as the artist’s fame was rising, to a Berlin art dealer. A series of German collectors owned it before A. Conger Goodyear, a Buffalo, New York, industrialist and co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, bought it in 1928. His son George later granted partial ownership to Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which displayed it for nearly three decades.

In May 1990, capping years of record-breaking prices for van Goghs, a Japanese businessman spent $82.5 million for “Portrait of Dr. Gachet” at Christie’s, then the highest price paid at auction for any artwork. About that time, Goodyear wanted to sell the 26-by-20-inch still life to raise money for another museum. It failed to sell at Christie’s in November 1990, where it had been expected to fetch between $12 million and $16 million. Soon after, a lower offer was accepted from a buyer who remained anonymous.

Most of the 400 or so oil paintings van Gogh produced during his last years — considered his best work — are at arts institutions around the world. About 15% are in private hands and not regularly on loan to museums. In the past decade, just 16 have been offered at auction, according to Artnet, an industry database. Among them was “Orchard With Cypresses,” from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, which Christie’s sold last year for $117 million to an undisclosed buyer.

The Producer and the Billionaire

For a year after the November 2014 auction, Wang kept the still life at his $25 million apartment in Hong Kong. In October 2015, the film producer was the guest of honor at a five-day exhibition in the city. An amateur artist, he had more than a dozen of his own oil paintings on display. But the main attractions were the van Gogh and a Picasso he had recently bought, “Woman With a Hairbun on a Sofa.” Sotheby’s said Wang had paid nearly $30 million for the work. Until then, Japanese industrialists, followed by American hedge fund managers and Russian oligarchs, had captured headlines for record-breaking purchases. Around 2012, newly rich Chinese buyers, who had benefited from their country’s market-opening policies, came on the scene. “All the auction houses really jumped on that,” said David Norman, who headed Sotheby’s impressionist and modern art department when the van Gogh was sold.

Chinese billionaires were often delighted to announce their big-ticket purchases. In 2013, a retail magnate bought a Picasso for $28 million at Christie’s, following up with a $20 million Claude Monet at Sotheby’s in 2015. The same year, a stock investor spent $170 million at Christie’s for an Amedeo Modigliani. “It is a combination of vanity, investment and building their own brand,” said Kejia Wu, who taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and is the author of a new book on China’s art market. Wang, 63, basked in the spotlight. In interviews, he spoke of his admiration for van Gogh and the artist’s influence on him. “Few people in the world would buy this kind of painting — there aren’t that many who love impressionist art this much and can afford it, right?” Days after the hammer fell at Sotheby’s, Wang had told a Chinese publication that he had not bought the painting alone, although he offered no details. Later, he no longer mentioned any partner. “When I saw the painting at a preview, I just felt like owning it — it stirred my heart,” he said in an interview published on Sotheby’s website. The high-profile acquisition, made through an intermediary and with the ultimate source of funds remaining a secret, is the kind of transaction governments have been trying to curb in recent years.

In one scandal, the United States charged a Malaysian businessman with laundering billions of dollars from a state development fund, using some of it to buy art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. In 2020, the Senate issued a scathing report on how auction houses and art dealers had unwittingly helped Russians evade sanctions by allowing others to buy art for them. A spokesperson for Sotheby’s said it vetted all buyers and, when necessary, enlisted its compliance department for “enhanced due diligence.” Sotheby’s applies worldwide a 2020 European Union rule that requires auction houses to verify the legitimacy of funds. Although the financial documents involving the van Gogh do not show wrongdoing, the transaction was hardly routine. Soon after the auction, Sotheby’s transferred ownership of the painting to the Shanghai man, neither a known art agent nor a collector, who paid the bill. But in a public ceremony, Sotheby’s handed over the painting not to him or the billionaire who employed him but to the producer, Wang. “There’s a connection to someone who is now incarcerated,” said Leila Amineddoleh, a New York-based art lawyer. “Something unusual is going on.”

‘White Gloves’
The man Sotheby’s considers the owner of the van Gogh lives in a Shanghai apartment complex where gray tiles and grimy grout frame a weather-beaten door. A mat out front states nine times, in English, “I am an artist.” The occupant, Liu Hailong, is listed as the sole owner and lone director of the shell company in the British Virgin Islands that paid for the painting: Islandwide Holdings Limited. Other than his date and place of birth, little is known about Liu, 46. When a reporter recently showed him the Sotheby’s invoice and a bank wire document and asked whether the signature was his, he said, “Please leave immediately,” and shut the door. A woman living with him, Zhao Tingting, has her own connection to the jailed billionaire, Xiao. She was once a top official at a company he co-founded, which had business dealings with relatives of China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. Zhao, 43, who no longer holds that position, now teaches piano. Asked about Liu’s purchase of the van Gogh, she responded, “Do you think our house comes close to the price of that painting?”

She and Liu were “just ordinary little employees,” she said, with no connection to the Tomorrow Group, the collection of companies controlled by the billionaire. “We have no right to make any decisions and no right to know anything.” The couple appear to have been “white gloves,” a term used in China to describe proxy shareholders meant to hide companies’ true owners. Among the thousands of pages of records providing details about the Tomorrow Group is a spreadsheet listing dozens of such people. At least four offshore companies were registered in Liu’s name. Those companies were part of Xiao’s vast enterprise. He had showed early promise, gaining admission to China’s prestigious Peking University at age 14 and serving as a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen protests. He sided with the government, an allegiance that would help him become one of the country’s richest men, acquiring control of banks, insurers and brokerages, as well as stakes in coal, cement and real estate. Unlike the many brash billionaires with whom he did business, Xiao preferred to operate in the shadows, building ties to some of China’s princelings. He settled into a quiet life at the Four Seasons, where a coterie of female bodyguards attended to his needs. Why one of his lieutenants paid for the van Gogh is not clear. Wang, the producer, was among the ranks of China’s wealthiest people, though not nearly as rich as Xiao.
Xiao’s easy access to money outside China through his offshore network allowed him to bypass the country’s strict currency controls; he may have acted as a kind of banker for Wang. The documents show that the two men were drawing up art investment plans the same month as the auction, but their joint venture, based in the Seychelles, wasn’t formed until a year later. Meanwhile, the two set up another offshore company, aimed at investing in film and television projects in North America. There could be another explanation for the payment: Xiao may have wanted to acquire an asset that could be transported across borders in a private jet, free from scrutiny by bank compliance officers and government regulators.

An Abduction, and a Vanishing Act
The fortunes of the men connected to the van Gogh purchase began to turn in 2015 with the crash of the Chinese stock market. Xi’s government blamed market manipulation by well-connected traders, and regulators wrested economic power back from the billionaires. Dozens of financiers disappeared, only to resurface in police custody. Art purchases became more discreet. In 2016, Oprah Winfrey sold a Gustav Klimt painting to an anonymous Chinese buyer for $150 million.
By early 2017, Xiao’s life as a free man was over. One night, about a half-dozen men put him in a wheelchair — he was not known to use one — covered his face and removed him from his Hong Kong apartment. He was taken to mainland China and eventually charged. Prosecutors claimed that his crimes dated back before 2014, the year the van Gogh was sold. He was sentenced last August to 13 years in prison for manipulating financial markets and bribing state officials. The court said Xiao and his company had misused more than $20 billion.

Government officials dismantled his companies in China. At some point, the British Virgin Islands business that bought the van Gogh changed hands and Liu was removed as its owner. For a while, Wang, the producer, maintained a high-flying lifestyle, opening a private museum in Beijing in 2017 that showcased the van Gogh and Picasso paintings for a few months. But the market value of his film studio, Huayi Brothers, vaporized as it backed flops. Wang let go much of his art collection and his Hong Kong home. Last year, the Beijing museum was sold off, along with a mansion that was tied to him in Beverly Hills, California. Wang and a spokesperson for his company did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Xiao could not be reached for comment in prison, although a family representative said the billionaire’s wife did not know of any involvement in the van Gogh purchase and was unfamiliar with Liu.

Van Gogh’s floral still life — a vibrant painting by one of the world’s most acclaimed artists — hasn’t been seen publicly for years. But there are reports that the artwork may be back on the market. Three people, including two former Sotheby’s executives and a New York art adviser, requesting anonymity, said the painting had been offered for private sale. Last year, the adviser viewed a written proposal to buy it for about $70 million. The art experts did not know whether the painting had sold or if concerns had been raised about the 2014 sale — a purchase by a onetime lieutenant to a now disgraced billionaire linked to a beleaguered film producer who claims the art belongs to him. “Nobody needs a $62 million van Gogh, and nobody wants to buy a lawsuit,” said Thomas Danziger, an art lawyer. “If there’s any question about the painting’s ownership, people will buy a different artwork — or another airplane.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
https://artdaily.cc/news/157846/The-mystery-of-the-disappearing-van-Gogh

Italian Police Confiscated a $4.2 Million Rubens Painting From a Genoa Exhibition as Part of a Fraud Investigation

A decade ago, the owners illegally exported the piece and staged fake sales abroad to boost its value, according to the Carabinieri.

Peter Paul Rubens, The resurrected Christ appears to his mother (c. 1612-16). Courtesy of the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale. Last week, Italian police pulled a Peter Paul Rubens painting from a Genoa exhibition, citing an investigation into the artwork’s two owners, who have been accused of money laundering and illegal exportation.

Now, according to the Art Newspaper, the 17th-century canvas has been returned to the show, called “Rubens in Genoa.” However, the probe into the owners continues, as law enforcement officials look into how they allegedly smuggled the painting out of the country a decade ago in an elaborate plot to boost its market value.

At the heart of the case is The resurrected Christ appears to his mother (c. 1612-16), a six-foot-tall painting, attributed to Rubens and his workshop, that depicts the Madonna kneeling before Christ in a cobalt blue cloak. On view now alongside 18 other Rubens works in Genoa’s Doge’s Palace, it is insured for €4 million ($4.2 million).

The artwork’s current owners acquired the artwork from the noble Cambiaso family for €300,000 in 2012, according to the Carabinieri agency for the protection of cultural heritage in Genoa.

However, just two years later, in 2014, the purchasers, along with an accountant and his son, exported the piece to Prague by claiming it was created by an unknown Flemish artist and was worth only €25,000.

They are believed to have obtained an export certificate from an accomplice who worked at the superintendent export office in Pisa. That same office was temporarily shut down in 2019 due to “irregularities” in the issuance of other certificates, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported.

The four suspects then established companies abroad to stage fake sales of the Rubens painting in an attempt to bolster its worth.

In 2015, conservators controversially removed a layer of the painting’s surface to uncover a second woman between Christ and the Madonna, likely from an earlier iteration of the composition. “The figure in question will be the subject of further investigations,” the Carabinieri explained.

That’s a safe prediction, and not just because of the legal investigation surrounding the painting. Questions over whether Rubens was indeed the artist behind The resurrected Christ appears to his mother have been raised in recent years as well.

“No Genoese source and no document attests the reference to Rubens of the painting exhibited in Genoa,” Vittorio Sgarbi, an art historian now serving as Italy’s undersecretary to the culture minister, said in a statement to La Repubblica. He alluded to the “uncertain quality of the work” and noted that the “history of the art lived for three hundred years without this improbable Rubens.”

“I invite those who have carried out the preliminary investigations, who have led to the seizure of the work, to greater prudence and rigor in evaluations, to avoid embarrassing mistakes,” the undersecretary went on. “Criminal liability cannot be assumed for a controversial attribution, deviated from the illusory and presumed market value.”

In response, the Genoa show’s co-curator Anna Orlando said that “the work is not under discussion.” Orlando pointed out that the exhibition’s other organizer, Nils Büttner, is “the highest authority on Rubens in the world.”

Taylor Dafoe, January 4, 2023 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-police-confiscate-rubens-painting-genoa-fraud-smuggling-2238331

A $100 Million Willem de Kooning Painting Finally Returns to the Arizona Museum It Was Stolen From 37 Years Ago

The work suffered significant damage from the theft but has been carefully restored at the Getty Museum. Jo Lawson-Tancred, September 28, 2022

University of Arizona staff at the inspection and authentication of the recovered Willem de Kooning painting Woman-Ochre (1954–55), ©the Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bob Demers/UANews, courtesy of the University of Arizona Museum of Art.

A Willem de Kooning painting that was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985 has finally returned home. A New Mexico gallery called Manzanita Ridge Furniture and Antiques found Woman-Ochre (1954-55) in 2017 among the possessions of Jerry and Rita Alter, whose estate it had bought for $2,000 after they both died.

The museum’s interim director, Olivia Miller, recalled the moment she arrived in Silver City to see the long-lost work. “I was able to kneel down on the floor in front of it and take it in. It was a really special moment.” “Seeing it come back was this moment of relief and peace of mind,” she said. “Everyone on campus is excited, everyone at the Getty is excited. The fact that one painting can make all these people come together is—I don’t know—there really are not words for it.”

Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre (1954–55) in August 2017, shortly after it was recovered in New Mexico and returned to the University of Arizona Museum of Art. ©2019 the Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The Alters, who were schoolteachers, are now believed to have stolen the work in broad daylight, the day after Thanksgiving, with Rita distracting the security guards so that Jerry could cut the painting out of its frame. The heist only took 15 minutes.

This rough treatment came at a cost, causing significant harm to the painting which is today valued at $100 million. The painting underwent a complex restoration process, performed free of charge by the Getty. “The brutal way in which it was ripped from its lining caused severe paint flaking and tears, not to mention the damage caused by the blade that was used to slice it from its frame,” said the Getty’s senior paintings conservator, Ulrich Birkmaier.

The process involved removing several layers of varnish, re-bonding the flaking paint, and using precise dental tools and minuscule quantities of paint to fill in the rips and tears. Afterward, it went on public display at the Getty over the summer.

Woman-Ochre is from the artist’s “Woman” series. It will be publicly exhibited at the Arizona museum from October 8 and will appear In a documentary film, The Thief Collector, which offers further insight into the Alters, and will be screened at Centennial Hall at 7 p.m. on October 6.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/stolen-de-kooning-returns-arizona-museum-2182926