SXSW 2022: The Thief Collector digs into a bizarre art world mystery

The Thief Collector. // Courtesy of Scott Grossman

When your film opens with Glenn Howerton wearing a fake pencil-thin mustache, you know this isn’t going to be your traditional documentary.

True enough, the wild vibe of The Thief Collector is in line with that strange initial shot. At first glance, the story seems benign, simple, and a little silly. Yet as it unwinds, it reveals something stranger and sweeter than you’d expect. 

In 1985 a rare painting, Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre,” was stolen in broad daylight from the University of Arizona Museum of Art. For over 30 years, the theft remained a mystery, until one day it was found tucked behind a door frame in the unlikeliest of homes, belonging to teachers Jerry and Rita Alter.

The story of how it ended up there and its long journey back to its rightful home is one with more twists and turns than a tilt-a-whirl. When they say that truth is stranger than fiction, this is what they’re talking about.

The theft occurred in the 80s, but the most important aspects of the story unfold in 2017. During an inspection of the Alter Estate in New Mexico following Rita’s death in 2017, antiques dealer David Van Auker found the missing painting—valued at over $160 million—among a bizarre assortment of knick-knacks and artifacts from around the world.

Van Auker returned it to the University of Arizona, but the question remained: how exactly did it end up in the home of the Alters? Did they buy it from someone? Did they pull off the perfect crime? 

Structurally, director Allison Otto breaks things down into four digestible pieces: the crime, the find, the art, and the Alters. Each section is explored with astonishing detail from the theft itself to the history of de Kooning’s artwork.

Otto talks to the founder of the FBI’s art crime team, de Kooning biographers, and the curator of the University of Arizona museum of art—all before finally getting to the relatives of Jerry and Rita Alter. 

The Alters were packrats, and The Thief Collector benefits greatly from Rita’s obsessive documentation of their lives in home movies, slides, photos, and notebooks. Much of the story is informed by what the Alters left behind, which includes a set of short stories by Jerry that may or may not include a laundry list of criminal confessions.

Otto further illustrates the story of the painting and its possible criminal owners with re-enactments (like the opening shot of a mustachioed Howerton as Jerry Alter) that feel like an episode of Drunk History directed by Wes Anderson. The representations are fascinating, hypnotic, and possibly all based on lies—all the more intriguing.

From a technical perspective, The Thief Collector, is slight and feels like a short subject stretched out to feature-length. The effect, at worst, is a “nice” documentary rather than something fulfilling or profound. It’s good, and sometimes just plain good is good enough, even if there’s some nagging that a little more editorial trimming could have helped.

Overall, even with a few missteps, The Thief Collector is an entertaining experience that opens up a web of mysterious possibilities. There’s a good chance that the tale of the Alters and their possible grand art theft will live on in infamy for years to come—a legacy befitting a pair self-described “masters of victimless crimes.”