After a Willem de Kooning painting worth millions was brazenly stolen in 1985 from an Arizona museum, the staff clung to the hope that it would turn up one day. But nobody could have predicted “Woman-Ochre” would find its way back through the kindness of strangers in a neighboring state.
“I would kind of imagine what would that look like,” said Olivia Miller, interim director and exhibitions curator at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson. “Would it just show up as a mysterious package in the mail or something like that? ... I certainly never thought I’d make friends from it.”
