A pair of paintings stolen decades ago have been found and returned home to New Mexico.
Starting Friday, they’ll be on display so the public can view the pieces once thought to be gone forever.
The works — “Aspens,” by Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp’s “Oklahoma Cheyenne” — were stolen from the Harwood Museum of Art in 1985.
Sharp (1859-1953) and Higgins (1884-1949) were influential members of the Taos Society of Artists, Museum Executive Director Juniper Leherissey said Thursday. She said Sharp was among the organization’s founders and Higgins was one of the youngest members of the Harwood’s original governing board.
She said it’s “surprising” to have the paintings back, years after the case had gone cold.
According to contemporary reports, Rita and Jerry Alter lifted the paintings by using a ruse in which Rita feigned a need for a wheelchair, creating a distraction that allowed Jerry to take the paintings off the wall — damaging one of the frames in the process — and smuggled them out under his trench coat.
The path to recovering the works for Leherissey began with a telephone call from Lou Schachter, described in a news release as a “writer and art theft sleuth.”
Schachter, she said, found the “Harwood Heist” very similar to the November 1985 theft of a Willem de Kooning painting from the University of Arizona Museum of Art.
The Alters are profiled in the 2022 documentary The Thief Collector, which names them the pinchers of the de Kooning work. Schachter, according to the release, spotted the stolen Higgins and Sharp paintings hanging on their wall.
“It seems they funded their extravagant travel through the stealing of art,” Leherissey said.
After speaking with Schachter, Leherissey put together a task force that immediately began gathering evidence to build a case. Eventually, Leherissey said, it was learned that the paintings were sold in 2018 by the Scottsdale Auction House, under different names.
The FBI took the case last spring, and agents in Santa Fe delivered the stolen paintings to the Taos museum earlier this month.
Leherissey said they are in good shape and will be unveiled as part of an exhibition called “The Return of Taos Treasures,” which will include other works by the artists. She said she was unsure whether the museum would have the works back before the show, but they arrived in time.
Leherissey told CityDesk ABQ the recovered paintings are exemplary of the artists’ work, though their canvases are smaller than what they normally did. Higgins is known for landscapes and a modernist approach, while Sharp depicted Indigenous cultures through portraits and scenes that emphasizing a romanticized view of Pueblo culture.
Both artists lived and worked in Taos for most of their careers.
Leherissey said the paintings are returning to a situation far different from the one from which they were removed. She said the museum was, at the time of the theft, an upstairs space in the public library.
It now boasts accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums, along with much more robust security protocols.
The unveiling is part of the museum’s First Friday event, which starts at 4 p.m. on June 6. Admission is pay-what-you-wish. “Oklahoma Cheyenne,” “Aspens” and the rest of the exhibit will be on display through Sept. 7.
The evening will also include a screening of The Thief Collector and a Q-and-A featuring Leherissey, Schachter, David Witt, who was Harwood Museum’s curator at the time of the 1985 heist and David van Auken, who discovered the missing de Kooning work, “Woman-Ocher.”
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
WHEN: 4 to 7 p.m., June 6WHERE: UNM Harwood Museum of Art, 238 Ledoux St, Taos.