The FBI recently recovered two paintings stolen from the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art in Taos four decades ago.
Victor Higgins’s oil painting Aspens (c. 1932) and Joseph Henry Sharp’s portrait Oklahoma Cheyenne aka Indian Boy in Full Dress (c. 1915) were stolen in March 1985 from the institution, which was “primarily a public library at the time with a museum on the second floor,” according to the press release. The FBI investigation was prompted by a phone call from Los Angeles–based investigative reporter Lou Schachter to Harwood Museum of Art executive director Juniper Leherissey in late 2023. Schachter said he had uncovered “substantial evidence” connecting the theft of the two paintings with Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ocher (1954–55) from the University of Arizona Museum of Art. That artwork was returned to the university in 2017 after being a cold case for 32 years, and a 2022 documentary profiling the thieves behind the art theft—Rita and Jerry Alter of Cliff, New Mexico—included a still photo showing the stolen paintings by Higgins and Sharp in the couple’s living room.
That call prompted Leherissey to lead an Art Recovery Task Force focused on gathering additional evidence, including dozens of documents and notices about the thefts on national and international stolen art lists, which was eventually presented to FBI Special Agent Susan Garst on March 25, 2024. Less than a month later, the FBI confirmed it would take on the museum’s case in April of last year.
