This Week: A Stolen-Found De Kooning Resurfaces, and Police Fool Thieves With Fake Brueghel

  • March 14, 2019 12:10

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University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tuscon will once again display de Kooning's Woman-Ochre after a restoration and exhibit at the Getty. The painting was stolen in 1985, and found in 2017 at an estate sale.
University of Arizona

Willem de Kooning's 'Woman-Ochre,' recently rediscovered in an estate sale after being stolen from a museum in 1985, will finally see the light of day. Said to be worth $100 million, the painting was found for sale by a New Mexico antiques dealer in 2017. It had been cut from its frame and removed from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tuscon more than 3 decades earlier. The mystery of its theft is still under investigation by the FBI, but this week the painting comes out of storage for a quick cocktail reception at the museum in Tucson, before it heads to the Getty Center for restoration and then on loan for a 2020 exhibition in Los Angeles, writes Jori Finkel in the NYT.

In Italy on Wednesday, a painting of the Crucifixion by Flemish master Pieter Brueghel the Younger, worth millions, was snatched from a church. But police had earlier heard of the plot and switched out the artwork, placing a copy in the same spot at Santa Maria Maddalena church, in the town of Castelnuovo Magra in Liguria. Now, investigators will study surveillance footage of the theft to help determine the thieves' identities, reports BBC.


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