When the owners of a New Mexico antique store agreed to appraise and buy an estate in rural Cliff, New Mexico, in August 2017, they found a lot of unusual possessions left behind by the deceased elderly married couple who’d previously owned it. The antique store guys were struck by a mid-century abstract painting curiously tucked away behind a door in the master bedroom, but their main focus was on how cheap and ugly its frame was. They planned to display it in a guesthouse after getting a better frame, but soon after placing it in their store, a customer told them he thought it was an authentic Willem de Kooning painting and offered $200,000 for it. Realizing they might be in over their heads, they started some basic online research and quickly started to suspect they had unwittingly acquired Woman-Ochre, one of the most infamous and valuable stolen paintings in the world.
The documentary The Thief Collector chronicles the theft of the painting, as well as its unusual recovery, and it is a wild ride of a movie. A very abbreviated summary is that Woman-Ochre disappeared in 1985 after a man and woman staged a brazen theft from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson. She distracted the staff, while her accomplice cut the painting out of the frame, rolled it up, and smuggled it out in his coat. Though authorities had hoped the painting would resurface in the underground art trade, it was never sighted again until the estate sale, nearly 32 years later.
This film spends a lot of time on how the painting was found, and that’s a genuinely interesting and even heartwarming tale. The antique dealers turned down a reward for returning the painting and insist they have no regrets about doing so. But the movie is also equally devoted to untangling the mystery of Jerry and Rita Alter, the quirky couple who kept the painting hidden in their house. Family and friends were initially gobsmacked at the idea that the mild-mannered, well-educated, middle-class teachers who loved traveling were likely art thieves wanted by the FBI. But a lot of circumstantial evidence suggests the Alters indeed were the ones who stole the painting. Further explorations of Jerry’s writings raise more questions than answers as they seem to document the theft while also suggesting they were also potentially guilty of other crimes.
I watched this movie with few expectations beyond a cursory knowledge of the recovery of the painting, and I enjoyed every minute of it. The talking heads are perhaps the best part, and there’s a wide variety of them. Interviewees range from the antique store owners who returned the painting to law enforcement officers who investigated the crime to art experts who contextualize the painting’s history to Alter family and friends who grapple with these revelations about people they thought they knew to Cliff locals bemused at the fact anything newsworthy happened in town.
The movie also features jaunty recreations of the theft and Jerry’s odd short stories, starring Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) as Jerry and Sarah Minnich as Rita. I’ve seen more mixed reviews for these compared to the rest of the documentary, but I didn’t mind them. Howerton’s intentionally ridiculous fake mustache never failed to crack me up, though sometimes these scenes did seem tonally at odds with the increasingly darker speculation about what exactly Jerry and Rita got up to, including (maybe) murder.
Ultimately, Jerry and Rita took their secrets to the grave with them, so most of the speculation about them remains that, but The Thief Collector is a fascinating exploration of the loss and recovery of Woman-Ochre. It reminds me a bit of Can You Ever Forgive Me? in its depiction of unlikely criminals and acts of malfeasance centered around art and culture. You can either check out a physical copy here at the library or stream it via our Hoopla or Kanopy digital collections.
Have you watched this movie? What’s your favorite art heist movie? What’s the best documentary you’ve watched recently? Tell us in the comments! As always, please follow this link to our online library catalog for more information on any of these items or to place them on hold.
P.S. If you know any kids between the ages of 8 and 12, help us spread the word about our upcoming spring break camp! We’ll be partying like it’s 1499 as we learn about Renaissance art, history, science, inventions, and more every afternoon from 1 to 5 pm, March 18 to 22. No art thieves allowed, but everyone else is welcome. 🙂
Berryville Book Buzz 