A Picasso Stolen 65 Years Ago Has Resurfaced. The Guggenheim Wants It Back
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation has filed suit in New York State Supreme Court to recover Pablo Picasso’s Femme dans un fauteuil (Woman in an Armchair) (1918), which was stolen in 1961 while on loan from the Guggenheim to the University of Pittsburgh. The painting disappeared on February 5, 1961 from the university’s Students Union building; despite police and FBI involvement and a reward offer, it remained missing for decades. The Guggenheim says the work resurfaced in 2023 when Christie’s prepared it for a private sale and a researcher flagged the museum’s connection in Christian Zervos’s Picasso catalogue raisonné; the museum demanded its return in August 2023, but Massachusetts residents Lawrence Jay Handler and Wendy Cohen Handler—who allegedly bought it from Beadleston Fine Art in 1999—refused. After attempted negotiations from August 2023 through July of this year, the Guggenheim is seeking the painting’s return and $3.5 million to $5 million in compensatory damages in a filing dated August 13, while the work has remained at Christie’s. The Guggenheim acquired the painting from London’s Gallery Zwemmer in 1936, and court filings cite its value as $10,000 to $60,000 at the time of the theft; the museum also repaid insurer Chubb in late 2023 after Chubb had paid $7,000 following the 1961 theft.
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This story was covered in Stolen Masterpieces, Shaken Museums, Restitution Reckonings