Shop owner asked to waive rights to stolen $100M art
Few people will ever be asked to sign away their rights to something worth more than $100 million.
But that’s the position antique-store owner David Van Auker found himself in when the FBI recently asked him to sign a single-page document that waives ownership rights to a Willem de Kooning masterpiece.
Van Auker innocently purchased the oil painting as part of an estate sale in August 2017. Once he suspected it was stolen, he made arrangements for its immediate return to the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson.
More than a year after the safe return of the “Woman-Ochre” painting, Van Auker didn’t hesitate when the FBI asked him to put pen to paper on a re-
cent Saturday afternoon and sign the paperwork.
“It was a big sense of relief and a kind of excitement,” said Van Auker, who co-owns Manzanita Ridge Furniture & Antiques in Silver City, New Mexico.
The FBI isn’t talking. But the waiver was likely a “good housekeeping exercise” by the federal government, said attorney Lynne Graybeal with the Perkins Coie law firm, who isn’t involved in the case but has an art-law practice in Seattle.
Someone who purchases stolen art doesn’t have an ownership claim under the law, she said. But they may be entitled to damages if they can prove a financial loss. By signing a waiver, the FBI is “making it clear there is no claim,” she said.
The waiver paves the way for the title to the stolen art to be vested in the United States and then legally transferred back to the original owner, which is the university, she said. The FBI is involved in the case for two reasons: The stolen art was moved across state lines, and it’s a federal offense to steal major artwork from a museum.
Van Auker could have declined to sign. But he has cooperated in the investigation. From the moment he suspected the painting was stolen, he only wanted the art to go back to its owner.
For him, signing the waiver is just another chapter in the ongoing saga of “Woman-Ochre,” which was stolen 33 years ago this week from the university’s art museum.
Van Auker and the antiques store’s co-owners — Buck Burns and Rick Johnson — have received international media attention since the painting was recovered last year. Museum officials hailed them as “good Samaritans” for immediately calling when they suspected they had the school’s stolen painting. They neither sought nor received a reward.
“If someone gave us a choice between a million-dollar reward or the experience, we’d take the experience,” Van Auker said. “It’s been so much fun.”
The painting was discovered in the home of Rita and Jerry Alter, a couple of New Yorkers who moved to rural Cliff, New Mexico, in 1977.
Both teachers traveled extensively. Jerry died in 2012; Rita died in June 2017. After her death, the executor of their estate arranged to sell the house and its contents, unaware that a painting hanging behind their master-bedroom door was a stolen de Kooning.
Van Auker and his antique-store business partners bought the contents of the elderly couple’s home for $2,000. The lot included African art, midcentury modern furniture, pottery and several paintings. Most of the paintings were done by Jerry Alter and “were really not very good,” Van Auker said.
But Van Auker really liked one of the paintings, an abstract of a nude woman. It was loaded into the back of a pickup truck with lamps and African art and driven to the antique store in Silver City, about 30 minutes away.
Van Auker planned on hanging the 40 inch-by-30 inch painting in the guest house he owns.
He leaned the painting against a coffee table in the store. Before he could move it, the painting started attracting attention.
“I think that’s a real de Kooning,” one customer said. Van Auker assumed he had nothing more than a copy. But then two more visitors voiced similar opinions that the painting was a real de Kooning.
He typed the artist’s name into his internet browser. Up popped an azcentral.com article with a photograph that matched the painting in his store.
He nervously called the university museum, the FBI and a reporter from who had written the story he read online.
The FBI was “very interested,” he said. They told him to get the painting out of the store and hide it somewhere safe.
Frantic, Van Auker hid the painting behind the couch in his home and then stored it with a trusted friend.
He emailed photos and measurements of the painting to Olivia Miller, the museum’s curator. With each photo that she examined, Miller became more excited.
A day after his call, a team from the university made the 200-mile trip to Silver City.
They brought the painting back to Tucson in a minivan with police along for protection. Once at the university, officials were able to authenticate the painting as the stolen de Kooning.
The painting had been missing for 31 years. It arrived back to great fanfare, lots of tears and lots of clapping.
“This is what we’ve all been waiting for and the fact that it’s actually here is really unbelievable,” Miller said.
Architect and businessman Edward Gallagher Jr. had donated “Woman-Ochre” to the university museum in 1958 when it was appraised at $6,000. It was valued at $400,000 for insurance purposes when stolen.
Works by de Kooning, a Dutch-American abstract painter who died in 1997, have only increased in value. A similar work by the painter sold for $137.5 million in 2006.
Museum staffers believe the thieves chose the day after Thanksgiving in 1985 to steal the painting because the building would be quiet with few workers or visitors.
On Nov. 29, a man and a woman entered the art museum around 9:10 a.m.
The woman started chatting with the security guard in the stairwell between the first and second floors. The man headed upstairs to the second floor.
Police believe the woman talked to the guard to distract him so that the man could cut the canvas out of its frame, possibly with a box cutter. He rolled up the painting and hid it inside his blue winter jacket. The theft took less than 10 minutes.
They fled in a rust-colored sports car. Witnesses told police they saw the woman driving, and she seemed to struggle with the clutch.
Police found there wasn’t much of a crime scene. Museum staff didn’t get the car’s license plate. There was no video footage and no fingerprints.
University Police Chief Brian Seastone, who as a 27year-old officer was the case’s lead detective, knew chances were slim that such a valuable painting would remain in the Tucson area. The police report notes that Santa Fe, New Mexico, was a “possible clearinghouse for stolen property like art” at the time. It also mentions recent thefts of art in New York City that resulted in arrests.
Seastone alerted the media, FBI and Interpol, the global network of police forces.
Law enforcement circulated a description and composite sketch of the thieves. One was described as a woman 55 to 60 years old, wearing a scarf and “granny” glasses. The man was described as 25 to 30 years old with curly hair, an olive complexion, thick mustache and glasses.
The woman, Seastone said, may have been a man in disguise.
As many as 20 tips came in over the years, but none panned out, he said.
Whenever the FBI recovered famous stolen paintings, Seastone would follow up to see if “WomanOchre” was part of the lot.
“Is she in there?” he would ask.
The answer was always no.
University officials decided to draw attention again to the mystery in 2015, on the 30th anniversary of the theft.
University staff writer Emily Litvack wrote a news release and story that caught the attention of
and several other media outlets, who researched and wrote their own stories about the case.
The publicity push would pay off in August 2017, when Van Auker, the Silver City antiques store owner, found an online photo of the missing “Woman-Ochre” and recognized the painting as the one in his store.
The painting was back at the university within days.
But the mystery is not solved.
How did “Woman-Ochre” end up in a tiny New Mexico town 225 miles from Tucson? Was the painting in the house the entire time? Did Jerry and Rita Alter steal the de Kooning or acquire it from someone who did?
The FBI says the case is still under investigation. But over the last year, more clues point in the Alters’ direction.
Earlier this year, the couple’s nephew Ron Roseman, the executor of their estate, discovered a photograph taken on Thanksgiving Day in 1985. The photo places the Alters in Tucson with family a day before the painting was stolen from the art museum across town.
Roseman doesn’t want to believe his beloved aunt and uncle may have been involved in a major art theft. He has no idea how they got the painting or if they were involved in the heist.
He admits that “ultimately there’s a lot of coincidence.”
The Alters almost exclusively drove red cars. Their Thanksgiving Day photo is eerily similar to a composite sketch circulated by police after the theft. The couple were known to frequent art museums during their travels.
One day, the entire story may emerge. Until then, “Woman-Ochre” is never far from the minds of those who have close ties to the painting.
Like the antiques-store owner, Roseman said the FBI asked him to sign a waiver of ownership as executor of the Alters’ estate. He said he signed “without hesitation.”
As for Van Auker, he isn’t going away empty-handed.
He has priceless memories, and he said museum staff intends to eventually give him the gold commercial frame that once held the famous de Kooning in the Alters’ home.
He plans to hang it, empty, on the wall of his guesthouse, in the spot where he originally intended to hang the painting.