Purloined paintings returned to Harwood Museum after 40-year absence

Two stolen works of art were returned to the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art in Taos on Monday, after four decades and an FBI investigation.

“I’m just thrilled to have them back at the Harwood,” said Juniper Leherissey, executive director of the Harwood Museum.

In March 1985, Victor Higgins’ “Aspens” and Joseph Henry Sharp’s “Oklahoma Cheyenne” — also known as “Indian Boy in Full Dress” — were stolen from Harwood when it was a public library.

Both artists were influential members of the Taos Society of Artists, a group of artists who devoted themselves to Southwestern art. Sharp was a founding member of the group, and Higgins was one of the youngest members, according to Leherissey.

“It turns out that the thieves were fairly infamous. They were Rita and Jerry Alter, who are the subject of a documentary, ‘The Thief Collector,’” Leherissey said.

That documentary, which will be screened at the museum on the evening of June 6, as part of “The Return of Taos Treasures” event, details the Alters’ theft of another artwork, a $100 million Willem de Kooning painting from the University of Arizona Art Museum.

“We were more of a public library with an art collection then,” Leherissey said. “He (Jerry Alter) was in a trenchcoat. She (Rita Alter) pretended to need a wheelchair, and so created a distraction. And I believe he went upstairs and basically yanked the paintings from the wall and hid them in his trenchcoat.”

After the return of the de Kooning painting in 2017, a Los Angeles-based investigative reporter, Lou Schachter, realized the duo may have taken works of art from other places, too. He reached out to Leherissey, who convened an Art Recovery Task Force composed of the Harwood Collection Committee, board members and key staff to gather evidence of the theft and report it to the FBI.

In April 2024, Leherissey received a call from the FBI, which decided to pick up the case, giving the museum hope of uncovering the whereabouts of the paintings 39 years later.

“It is really quite gratifying to see these paintings returned full circle,” said FBI Special Agent Susan Garst, who led the investigation beginning in April 2024.

It was confirmed later that both of Harwood’s paintings were sold in 2018 by the Scottsdale Auction House in Arizona — “Aspens” for $93,600 and “Oklahoma Cheyenne” for $52,650, according to the museum. Both were advertised in the Scottsdale Auction House with changed titles, “Fall Landscape” and “Indian in a War Bonnet,” and neither were cited in any documentation as the artists’ titles.

“The title of the Joseph Henry Sharp is written on the back (of the canvas), so it’s a little questionable,” Leherissey said. “It’s 40 years later, so I’m sure they don’t want to be linked to impropriety. But they should have done their due diligence, honestly.”

Bizarrely, these same two paintings had been stolen before, in March 1977, according to a Taos News article from that year.

“I don’t know what it is about those two artworks, but it’s very, very curious,” Leherissey said.

Leherissey noted that the Harwood’s security system is “much more robust” nowadays.

“We’re definitely a different beast than we were in 1985 when we were a small town library with an amazing collection,” she said.

To celebrate “The Return of Taos Treasures,” the museum is inviting the public to see the reveal of the stolen paintings at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, June 6, inside the Ellis-Clark Gallery, followed by a screening of “The Thief Collector.”