Stealing for the love of it

On the day after Thanksgiving in 1985, a couple walked into the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson and absconded shortly thereafter with painter Willem de Kooning’s 1955 medium-busting work, “Woman-Ochre.”

The painting didn’t see the light of day for the next 32 years, flummoxing local law enforcement, university cops and the FBI alike. Cut to 2015, when employees of a small Silver City, New Mexico, antiques shop hired to handle the estate of Jerry and Rita Alter unearthed that de Kooning hidden in plain sight behind a bedroom door. What a wild turn of events.

In Love Bugs director Allison Otto’s new work, The Thief Collector, audiences will learn there might have been more to the story than that of a couple who just wanted to appreciate an art work. They’ll get to know the Alters better, discover how the theft came to pass, how an entire family failed to notice one of the most famously stolen paintings in the world and how a pair of world travelers lived a double life while evading capture or even suspicion.

In a way, it’s kind of romantic. At least at first. Through narration from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia alum Glenn Howerton (who also plays Jerry Alter in dramatic recreations throughout the film), we learn the couple traveled extensively, several times a year, in fact, though no one knows how they funded those sojourns. Otto and company even dig through a purported fiction collection written by Jerry Alter that indicates a shared superiority complex between the couple, as well as a profound misunderstanding about how to meaningfully engage with disparate cultures. We even get insight into why that specific de Kooning is so important, and how it went from being valued at roughly $60,000 to well over $100 million during its absence. The story likely doesn’t hurt its value.

The Thief Collector stumbles only briefly by giving in to speculative hearsay spurred by Jerry’s writing (no spoilers, but it’s kind of a letdown), but you’ve gotta feel for the surviving family members and friends who never knew the Alters harbored such levels of deceit.

As one of the talking heads says in an interview, there are those rare thieves who steal just to have the object they so badly desire. Of course, while it’s fun to think the Alters didn’t do it for the money, they did keep the painting from the world at large—and that’s the real tragedy. Still, The Thief Collector paints a portrait of its own, one where sharing is caring and real-life people do the right thing. Museums remain imperfect, fucked up, even, but that’s a story for another day.

By Alex De Vore