Retired Walters Art Museum Director, Gary Vikan, spoke about his book, Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director, at the Charles Village Barnes and Noble on Thursday, April 27.
The book, which was published last year, follows Vikan’s career as a curator, solving mysteries behind prominent museum thefts.
“A lot of theft takes place inside museums by people who are inside museums,” Vikan said. “Much of the book transpires my entry to the world of art smuggling, not on purpose, but almost by accident.”
Vikan shared a story of a theft that occurred at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in 2012, involving a woman known as the “Renoir Girl.”
“Renoir Girl” was the nickname given to Martha Fuqua, a middle-aged driving instructor from Northern Virginia. She bought Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s painting On the Shore of the Seine for $7 at a flea market in 2009.
“It was a fairytale,” Vikan said. “Everybody hopes and believes that if they just poke around in flea markets long enough, they’ll hit the jackpot.”
In 2012, Fuqua brought the painting to an auction. The auction company noted that the painting was worth $70,000 to $100,000.
“So as this hits the newspapers in December of 2012, we collectively scratch our chins and say, ‘Where the hell did this thing come from?’” Vikan said. “Renoir paintings don’t come out of thin air, do they?”
After some investigating, the auction company found that attached to the Renoir painting was paperwork leading to the BMA. When the incident began hitting headlines, a reporter from The Washington Post investigated files stored in the BMA’s library.
“He got one of those file folders, opened it up and came up to an orange colored card,” he said. “And it said ‘unknown to the BMA Saidie May Renoir, On the Shore of the Seine, sketch on linen, 1937.’”
Vikan surmised that before arriving at the flea market, the Renoir painting had been bought by Herbert May, a lawyer from Philadelphia. May’s wife, Saidie, had made numerous donations to the BMA.
The BMA subsequently found another file indicating that the painting had been stolen in 1951. They immediately alerted the FBI.
“The FBI swooped into the auction house, seized the painting and said, ‘somebody’s gotta find out who this belongs to,’” Vikan said. “At that point the ‘Renoir Girl’ took the case to court.”
In order to bring the case to court, Fuqua had to reveal her identity. The auction was canceled and she continued to make the front page in publications such as The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun.
“I opened The Baltimore Sun, and I saw the date, ‘November 14/15, 1951 stolen,’” Vikan said. “The minute I saw that date, I knew who stole the painting.”
Vikan recalled that in 1996, while he was still the director of the Walters Art Museum, he had received a mysterious package in the mail. Inside the package was an Egyptian plaque that had been stolen from the Walters Art Museum in 1951, the same year that the Renoir painting was stolen.
The following day, Vikan received a call from the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum and learned that it had also received a package containing pieces stolen from the Walters Art Museum in 1951.
Vikan learned that stolen items had also been returned to the BMA. The successor of a former employee had cleaned up the office and left the stolen item in a garage by accident. Vikan realized that this former employee was the same person who had returned the stolen items to Walters and the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum.
Vikan explained that he went to the Federal District Court of Northern Virginia for the hearing in 2014. However, Fuqua did not show up. The judge concluded that as the painting was stolen, Fuqua could not take ownership of the painting.
Vikan remembered reporters interviewing Fuqua’s brother, Matt, and asking whether his sister was a possible suspect.
“Matt says, ‘No, she wouldn’t do that,’” Vikan said. “‘But she had a lot of boyfriends, and her main boyfriend worked in the BMA.’”
Vikan later checked the names under the BMA’s Board of Trustees and learned that the painting was stolen by an assistant superintendent of the building, meaning that he had access to the BMA, Walters Museum and the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum. Vikan said that the man had died in 1987 at the age of 71.
“The painting was done by Renoir for his girlfriend,” he said. “My guess is that this guy stole the painting to give to his girlfriend, probably for Christmas. It stayed in the wall, in her house, from the early 1950s to 2012.”
The painting On the Shore of the Seine by Renoir was returned safely to the BMA and was held at an exhibit in 2014, where it remains today.
