The New Hotness: Highlights From The National Stolen Art File

Has it really been ten years since I poked through the FBI’s National Stolen Art File? Yes, yes it has. What’s been stolen—or reported stolen—in the mean time? Have you seen me? Luc Tuymans, The Heritage X, 1996, oil on linen, 33 x 74 1/2 in., stolen from David Zwirner Gallery in 1996,via FBI/NSAF Starting with the biggest heists, believe me when I say if this 3×6 foot Luc Tuymans painting from 1996 of a stealth photo of a marriage altar in the Salt Lake City Temple had been included in the FBI database in 2016, I would have written about it. I got thisclose to buying the Schellmann Edition photo version of the redo of this painting, Altar (2002), at Documenta 11, but decided to wait until I could figure out what Belgian TV documentary on the Mormons Tuymans had been watching in the 1990s that would have enabled him to take Polaroids of the screen. I’ve even reached out to the Church’s European communications office in Frankfurt to see if they had any idea. There’s a whole related…