On Friday, Woman-Ochre, a $100 million abstract-expressionist painting by master Willem de Kooning, will go on view at the University of Arizona’s Museum of Art nearly four decades after it was stolen from the same building—and five years after it was mysteriously discovered in a New Mexico house belonging to two retired public school teachers.
In tandem with the museum show, new FBI documents related to the 1985 theft—which was carried out by a man and a woman but for which no one has ever been charged—have been released, revealing further insights into the lives of Rita and Jerry Alter, former New York City teachers and New Mexico transplants whose home held the stolen painting.
The 1985 de Kooning robbery was deft: Early on November 29, a couple that had been waiting outside the university museum before it opened entered at approximately 9 a.m. While the woman distracted a museum guard, the man went up the stairs, sliced the de Kooning out of its frame, and rolled it up, authorities said. The couple made their escape in a sports car, and the painting vanished for decades.
