11 Warhol Portraits Stolen From Private Collector
Whether you consider Warhol’s work to be works of great art, or even good for that matter, one thing you can say about them is that they are regarded enough to snatch up to $1 Million a portrait.
On Sept. 3, a housekeeper for noted art collector Richard L. Weisman walked into the dining room of Weisman’s residence and saw that 11 Warhol large portraits that had been on the walls the day before were gone, and immediately phoned the police.
(NOTE: They don’t go into to detail on this, but don’t you find that sort of curious? I mean she just called the police without contacting her employer first? What made her think they were stolen? I mean it could be she DID talk to the employer, but wouldn’t you think that the homeowner would make this call? Odds are that she isn’t in need of any affordable medical assistance program after this theft 
. Just speculating like I am watching a big “heist” movie here I guess…lol)
There is a $1 million reward from an anonymous source for information that results in information that ultimately leads to the recovery of these portraits. Included in the lot is “The Athletes” depicting Dorothy Hamill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali and Chris Evert, and was commissioned by Richard L. Weisman who comes from a renowned family of collectors.
His parents, Frederick and Marcia, were important figures in art circles, amassing a significant collection that centered on works by post-World War II artists. The younger Weisman was friends with Warhol and commissioned the square, brightly colored silk screen paintings of famous athletes in the late 1970s — a period when Warhol produced hundreds of works for wealthy patrons able to pay the large sums the artist charged.
The total value of the work could not immediately be discerned. However, Tyler Lemkin, director of the Greenfield Sacks Gallery in Santa Monica, which recently opened a show of Warhol prints, said that original Warhol paintings on canvas such as the ones that were stolen “start in the high six figures or $1 million.”
“This is a huge deal. You’re talking about a major collector who has lost a significant amount of important art,” Lemkin said.
