By MARTY LEVINE
When a Picasso painting on loan to Pitt for display at the William Pitt Union was stolen in 1961, the University offered a $100 reward for information leading to its recovery, and Pitt officials went looking for it among 2,500 pieces of local high-school student art at Kaufmann’s department store downtown, which was about to mount its annual scholastic art exhibit.
“‘We have some [art] just as weird,’” a Kaufmann’s rep said of the paintings local kids had contributed – but no Picassos were found among the bunch.
Today the Guggenheim Foundation says it has finally located the missing painting, and it is suing a Massachusetts couple for allegedly buying the work in 1999 from a New York art gallery and not returning it to the Guggenheim Museum.
The painting (“Figure – 1918,” a Cubist portrait of Picasso’s first wife on their honeymoon) depicts “a dark-haired woman with a lopsided face, hands the size of boxing gloves, and attired in a bright yellow, green and orange dress,” explained the Pittsburgh Press at the time of the theft – in case anyone noticed a neighbor with something new and different hanging above their sofa. It was only 11 by 14 inches and had been displayed in the Marble Lounge of the Union with nearly a dozen other Guggenheim paintings, as part of a program the museum undertook for universities throughout the U.S. This particular exhibit had arrived at Pitt on August 15, 1960, and was just about to be returned when the Picasso disappeared.
The painting had been padlocked to a thin metal chain and attached to the wall by wires that were apparently easily cut. The Marble Lounge was patrolled by a police officer whose duties also included guarding the other four floors of the building; the room was locked from 11 p.m. until 8 a.m. each day, but still accessible via elevator from the student dormitory rooms above it.
Yet the only open exit from the Union at those hours was onto Fifth Avenue – had no one noticed a late-night heist?
The year 1961, when Picassos went out in public mostly unguarded, was a world away from today. A Pitt News report on the theft shared front-page space with the proposal of a new “University code for Men and Women’s dress on campus … drawn up by representatives from Associated Women Students, Student Union Board, Men’s Council and Student Senate.” In classrooms and the Tuck Shop, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., the new rules called for “collared shirts tucked in, dress or khaki pants for men, and sweaters, blouses, skirts, or dresses for women.
“Pin curls are not permitted at any time,” it warned.
The day’s other news included the date for Pitt’s Annual Military Ball, with a jazz band and “the Top Hats, the professional Air Force group, and also various acts from the Pittsburgh Variety Club,” as well as a tea and a queen selection by Army and Air Force officers. The Union was set to host an “Intercollegiate Dance featuring The Collegians, a dance band made up of 15 members of the University’s marching band,” and Student Government elections were heated between the Allied Collegiate Party and the Interest Deserves Energetic Action Party – until they merged, only to face off against Students for Progressive Action.
On its editorial page, The Pitt News was quick to blame University officials for the crime – the first for a Guggenheim exhibit, it noted. The student paper criticized the security choices all around, from the small chain to the single police officer. “We point out that many a bank has been robbed with more than one policeman in the vicinity,” it said, adding that another painting on a University site – a mere copy, but still costly – had already gone missing, and that the University had suffered from a rash of thefts lately: “These crimes range from pilfering in the dormitories and the Student Union to the $150 extraction from the bookstore” over the previous month. “University administrators fear that if the [Picasso] thief was an amateur, he will burn it. We join them in asking the culprit, if he is a member of the University, to place the painting discreetly in a conspicuous place, rather than panic and destroy one of Picasso’s best. If the person does not want to leave it somewhere, mail it to us…”
But apparently the year 1961 was a banner one for art theft. As the lawsuit notes, on May 27, 2016, over 50 years after the theft, ARTnews published an article titled ‘The Art-Theft Fad: Stolen Paintings by Goya, Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, and More, in 1961,’” highlighting the Pittsburgh crime.
The head of Pitt’s fine arts department in 1961 told local newspapers that Picassos were valued up to $40,000, and this one might be worth $10,000, although, as the Post-Gazette cautioned: “Yesterday, Thomas M. Messer, director of the Guggenheim Museum … said that the only way one could actually determine its monetary worth would be to offer it for sale and see what price it would bring. He did not say how or at what price, the museum acquired it.”
A Pittsburgh Police detective was put on the case, noting that “news of the theft … was not made public [immediately] because it might be a student prank and … the painting might be returned.”
It was not. The FBI was soon brought in. Interviews with people who had been in the building the night before the art heist narrowed the time of the crime to the 12 hours before its discovery, since a Union visitor – a young woman attending a glee club concert there – said she saw the painting on display the night before. The Guggenheim flooded commercial galleries and museums across North America with notices, asking them to be on the lookout for the painting.
But Pittsburgh police soon admitted the case was “at a standstill.”
If you’d ever like to see the painting for yourself, you might root for the Guggenheim Foundation to win its case. The couple who have owned it since 1999 were trying to sell it at Christie’s auction house when the Guggenheim claim stopped them. The two parties have been in negotiations for the past three years, the lawsuit says, without an agreement.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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