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Category: Front Page News Front Page News
Published: 12 August 2017 12 August 2017

de kooning at manzanita maureen craigde Kooning at Manzanita Maureen CraigPhoto of the Willem de Kooning painting in the frame it arrived in at Manzanita Ridge used furniture store in Silver City, NM. Photo Courtesy of Mareen Craig.

Article by Mary Alice Murphy

David Van Auker, Buck Burns and Rick Johnson, owners of Manzanita Ridge used furniture and decorative items store in downtown Silver City, made the find of a lifetime.

They purchased items at an estate sale that was being overseen by a distant relative of the couple who had died.

But how was the painting identified?

Toward the end of July or first of August, the store received a call from a gentleman from Texas who was handling his aunt's and uncle's estate. He told them he had taken most of the "good stuff," but had items that the store might be interested in.

The three store owners got access to the property and decided to go into different rooms of the house.

Van Auker chose the master bedroom. Behind the door hung the painting, which had been attached to a piece of Masonite board. "I liked the painting and thought it might be nice in our house." He called in Burns, who also liked it and said they should take it as part of their purchase.

Having decided what they wanted from the house, they made an offer to the nephew, who accepted it, and a check was mailed to the nephew.

The partners loaded up what they wanted, and put the painting in the backseat of the pickup truck. They planned to return with a U-Haul for the larger pieces.

After unloading the items into the store, they rested it against a post.

A gentleman came into the store the next morning and asked if it was a real Willem De Kooning painting. "I told him I thought it was a good print," Van Auker said. "Then another customer came in and asked the same thing."

"I didn't think anything of it," he said. "I thought it was a study, because the estate owners were artists."

However, when the third and fourth person commented on the painting, the owners put it away so people wouldn't continue touching it.

"Our friend, Maureen Craig, did some research," Van Auker said. "She told me to get hold of what I thought she said was the Willem de Kooning Society, so I went to the computer and looked for them."

On probably the fourth page of his search, he said: "and I still don't know why I chose to click on the article, but I found an article about the 1985 theft of de Kooning's Woman-Ochre from the University of Arizona Museum of Art. This article was written in 2015 to memorialize the theft."

According to the article in Tucson News Now of Aug. 11, 2017, at http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com, a couple had followed a staff member into the museum the day after Thanksgiving in 1985 and asked to enter the museum early. "The woman distracted one of the security guards while the man walked upstairs to the gallery. 'The painting was cut out of its frame,' the University of Arizona said in a news release to Tucson News Now. "'The two hurried out of the museum and never returned. The heist took no more than 15 minutes.'"

The article said the security guard discovered what had happened and tried to catch them, but it was too late.

Olivia Miller, museum curator, said, in the news release, they figured it was a work for hire, with the two paid to steal it.

"When we saw the article from 2015, with a photo of the painting, we blew it up as large as we could and tried to match it to the painting we had," Van Auker said during an interview with ABC Nightly News over Skype, which was to be aired Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017.

He found the phone number for the U of A Museum of Art and called it. The receptionist connected him to Miller. "I didn't want them to think I was crazy," Van Auker said.

He didn't hear back form U of A after sending photos, so he called the FBI in Albuquerque, where he said the agent took notes. "He then became very interested and told us to find someplace safe for it. I didn't sleep at all that night."

"It was Aug. 1, when I first saw the painting," Van Auker said. "I turned it over to the museum on Aug. 4."

In an article, https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/after-31-years-stolen-womanochre-returns-ua, written by Emily Litvak, UA Research, Discovery and Innovation, and posted Aug. 11, 2017, the author goes into detail about the determination of the museum staff that it likely was their de Kooning and how they came to Silver City after receiving photos of the painting.

According to the article, "A friend of Van Auker's had agreed to safe-keep 'Woman-Ochre' at his home but was hosting a barbecue for out-of-town family when the UAMA team and officers from the Silver City Police Department arrived on the scene. They stepped inside, and into the room where 'Woman-Ochre' sat.

"That's when it really got emotional," Van Auker says in the article. "It was so electric in the room. I've never felt anything like that in my life, ever. Seeing Olivia's reaction, and seeing the faces of the people from the U of A … It was just pure elation. You had to be there. It was a moment I'll never forget."

When asked by ABC News, if he had ever thought about hanging onto it, Van Auker said: "By God's witness, once I realized it was stolen, not once did I think about keeping it. Not one of the three of us for even a split second thought of keeping it."

People ask him if there is a reward for the return of the piece that is estimated to be worth between $100 million and $160 million.

"I have no idea," Van Auker said. "I haven't asked."