Woman-Ochre

Recovered in 2017. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1985, Willem de Kooning's 1955 painting was cut from its frame at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, apparently carried out under a visitor's coat. The museum had no security cameras and no fingerprints were found. More than 30 years later a New Mexico antiques dealer bought the contents of a house for $2,000 and found it hanging in the main bedroom of two former New York schoolteachers, Jerry and Rita Alter. He took it back to the museum. Circumstantial evidence points to the Alters, but the FBI has never confirmed their involvement. The Getty Conservation Institute finished restoring it in 2022.