Page 11 - fall2017

The shop paid $2,000

for furniture, pottery

and art that included Van Auker moved it to a friend’s
house and called the UAMA. He
reached Meg Hagyard, the new
the de Kooning. interim director, who informed
the UA Police Department and
the FBI and organized a large
delegation, 16 in all, to Silver
City.
be seen again for 32 years, until of the icons of the campus The team wrapped the
it’s discovered at an estate sale. collection, now numbering canvas in protective layers and
“Now that’s incredible,” Seastone 6,000 items, says UAMA took it to the Grant County
says. Marketing Manager Gina Sheriff’s Office to be crated and
It made headlines in The Compitello-Moore. transported back to Tucson.
New York Times, and indeed De Kooning was prominent At the UAMA, the 30-by-
worldwide, after the story broke in the abstract expressionist 40-inch painting was placed
on Friday, Aug. 11, in The Arizona movement that included in the vault. The staff became
Republic. Jackson Pollock and Mark convinced it was “Woman-
The shop owner did not ask Rothko, both of whom are also Ochre” when they saw that the
for a penny, saying, “We just part of the UAMA collection. canvas had a brushstroke of
wanted to right a wrong.” As the story goes, on Aug. 1 jet-black paint on the upper left-
The painting, “Woman- the owner of Manzanita Ridge hand side that aligned with a
Ochre,” arrived back on campus Furniture & Antiques, David Van stroke on a scrap of canvas left
Aug. 6 with all the fanfare due Auker, was wandering through by the thief.
the homecoming of art worth at a home in Cliff, New Mexico, 30 The 1985 theft unfolded at
least $100 million, perhaps $160 miles northwest of Silver City, about 9 a.m., when a museum
million. The journey was short: snapping photos of bedroom security officer opened the front
a three-hour trip with museum sets and pottery. Just another door of the museum and two
and UA security officials from work day. visitors entered. One went to
Silver City, New Mexico. Van Auker noticed a canvas the second floor and stayed just
The painting had turned in a bedroom. He bought it, long enough to cut “Woman-
up there in Manzanita Ridge along with other items, headed Ochre” out of its frame with a
Furniture & Antiques, along with back to town and dropped off razor blade and slip it under a
Asked if the teacher was other items bought on Aug. 1 the painting at the store. garment before the two walked
suspected in the brazen crime, in from the estate of a couple who After three customers said out. It took no more than 15
which one thief may have worn had hung the de Kooning in their that it could be an authentic minutes.
women’s clothing as a disguise, bedroom. de Kooning, with one offering At the time of the theft, a
UA Police Chief Brian Seastone The shop paid $2,000 for $200,000 for it, the shop hid $10,000 reward was offered for
replied: “That’s an investigative furniture, pottery and art that the painting in a bathroom. return of the de Kooning. The
lead, absolutely: high on our list.” included the de Kooning. Later Van Auker came upon an UA police are not sure whether
“It was something right out The painting vanished Nov. article in The Arizona Republic that amount will still be paid.
of a movie,” Seastone says. The 29, 1985, 27 years after it was headlined “Unsolved Arizona The painting was insured for
museum doors open. One thief donated to the UA by Edward mystery: de Kooning painting $400,000, which was paid to
hurries upstairs. An accomplice J. Gallagher Jr., a Baltimore valued at $100 million missing UAMA and returned after the
distracts the guard. Minutes businessman. It was one of the for 30 years.” de Kooning was recovered.
later they rush out the door largest gifts in UAMA history. Convinced — and worried
with the painting, which won’t The 1950s de Kooning was one — that he had the real thing,

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