Did I ever tell you about the time I stole a Franz Kline?

Was this it?

Long ago, I was told by my then-husband that there was a whole closet full of stuff at his graduate school that the students had been warned would be thrown out soon.  It was all free to be taken.  He thought he’d seen a painting.

I said, “Great, let’s go look.”

So we drove to school, he showed me the way to the closet, and we opened it.  There were a lot of junk-like objects.  Boxes, cleaning supplies, I think a bucket and mop?  It’s hard to remember.  It wasn’t even really a big closet, just a janitor’s closet, and it was dark.

Or maybe this one?

But he was right, there was a large painting leaning against one wall.  We pulled it out and saw that it was mostly white, with black stripes and shapes on it.  Kind of looked like calligraphy.  I loved it, so we took it home.

Right past other students and the guards at the front entrance.  It was big.  And no one cared.

I was barely art-educated at that time, but I knew that it was beautiful.

It might have been this.

My ex was excited.  And the painting did look stunning in our secondhand-furnished dump of a grad-school house.  But I started to worry.  I am a worrier.

Within a couple of weeks, I had discovered an inventory tag nailed to the painting’s supports.  More excitement.  More worrying.  It clearly belonged to someone.

I eventually made him return it.  He said he walked it into school and put it back in the unlocked closet and no one cared.  I felt better.  Kinda.  But I missed it.  A lot.

And kept missing it, until a few years later when I saw a Franz Kline in a museum and I knew.  It was unmistakeable.  Mine had been a Kline, too.

Sigh.

Why had I consigned it to a nasty closet where it might be thrown out?  How sure was I that eventually the Cincinnati Art Museum would realize what they had lost, and then decide to look in a closet at the medical school?

I could have kept it.  I wouldn’t have sold it, but I could have lived with it my whole life. And then donated it. Who was going to find out?  Or find me?

Did I do the right thing?  Or the wrong thing?

I didn’t know at the time that it was valuable, just that it had once belonged to an institution with inventory number tags.

Now I’m really sorry.  If I had known, I would have taken it to a museum, who would have tracked down the real owner.  Eventually.

I don’t even have a photo of it.  And I miss it.

A lot.