Stolen art — BYU searches the world to recover pilfered pieces

PROVO — Thirty-nine years ago this week, New York City art dealer Dion O'Wyatt swindled Brigham Young University out of a sketch by French impressionist painter Claude Monet and a drawing by American artist Winslow Homer.

On June 20, 1969, a BYU art collection manager allowed O'Wyatt to take the drawings back to New York for authentication because the dealer said he was interested in purchasing the pieces.

O'Wyatt did authenticate the Homer drawing, but he also hired a street artist to forge both pieces of art. He removed the originals from their frames and sold the drawings to Hammer Galleries of New York City. Then O'Wyatt placed the forgeries in the frames and personally delivered them to BYU on June 30, 1969.

The forgeries remained undiscovered for 16 years amid BYU's poorly protected art collection until new managers ordered an inventory in 1986. They were shaken to find that thieves, predatory art dealers and even previous donors had plundered more than 900 pieces of art.

The losses were calculated 23 years ago at $4 million to $6 million.

But this isn't a tale of thievery. Instead, it's a story of recovery. Some remarkable police work allowed BYU to reclaim the Monet sketch and Homer drawing from separate owners 19 years after the forgeries were switched for the originals.

And last year, after many years without a success, an international organization helped BYU recover another important work, this one a painting by a grandson of Brigham Young.

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Recovering art stolen 25, 30 or 40 years ago is difficult for many reasons, including the fact that most of the pieces were quickly sold and have since been resold to private buyers who had no idea they were buying something that belonged to BYU.

"The bulk of our art went to Europe and was laundered there," BYU Police Lt. Arnie Lemmon said. "Ten years later, it started to bubble up again, after being sold two or three times between good-faith purchasers."

Lemmon has tracked the university's art around the world and has recovered about 60 pieces so far. He learned about one painting when it was put up for auction by Christie's in Beverly Hills. A minister had bought the painting for $15,000, but he had to surrender it to BYU.

Some who find out they own a BYU work don't cooperate. For 20 years, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has refused to return a BYU painting, a work by J. Alden Weir. An attorney for the museum didn't dispute BYU's previous ownership but told the Los Angeles Times in 1989 that BYU abandoned its claim because the painting had been shown repeatedly over the years without any complaint from the university.

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