Stolen art returned to Harwood Museum of Art after 40 years | 4 Investigates
TAOS, N.M. — At the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, two paintings are back on display 40 years after they were stolen.
“I never thought that I would be so pleased to see the FBI in the Harwood Museum,” said Dora Dillistone, Chair of the Harwood Art Recovery Taskforce.
The FBI confirmed the two paintings – Victor Higgins’ “Aspens” and Joseph Henry Sharp’s “Oklahoma Cheyenne,” also known as “Indian Boy in Full Dress” – returned to the museum May 12 after they both vanished from the walls of the Harwood on March 20, 1985. Higgins and Sharp belong to the Taos Society of Artists, a culturally significant group in the region.
The FBI, museum director, a former curator and the true crime blogger who cracked the case all gathered Friday.
“This is definitely Christmas for me!” said Lou Schachter.
None of it would have happened without Schachter.
“I’m not a detective, I’m not a journalist. I don’t go looking for lost artwork, although people think that I do,” said Schachter.
He had connected the dots from a stolen, multi-million-dollar masterpiece, to an unassuming New Mexican couple, to the stolen Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp paintings from Taos. His true crime, travel blog re-examined the story of the infamous Alters. 4 Investigates covered this.
The return of an over $100 million stolen Willem De Kooning painting in 2018 following the deaths of Jerry and Rita Alter.
Friday also marked the first time the FBI addressed questions regarding the theft.
“All investigative leads have been exhausted,” said Margaret Girard, the acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Albuquerque Field Office.
The FBI would not say who purchased the stolen paintings from the Scottsdale Art Auction, or if the case was still ongoing.
Will this be the last time Schachter re-starts an investigation into a cold case?
“Anything is possible,” he said. “I do historical work, so I’m not sure if I will stumble on something else I can solve. But, certainly this has been a lot of fun.”
Congress passed the Theft of Major Artwork statute in 1994, nine years after “the Harwood heist” happened. The statute made it a federal offense to steal any object of cultural heritage from a museum.
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