A Washington and Lee professor is featured in an AMC+ “True Crime Story” episode on the famed heist of a Salvador Dalí painting.
Art history professor Elliott King weighs in on the 2003 theft of Dalí’s “Crucifixion,” which the surrealist had sent to the notorious Rikers Island prison in 1965, wishing the painting to be displayed in the prison’s dining hall.
It did, for a while, but a prisoner threw a cup of coffee at the painting in 1981, breaking the glass case and leaving a stain, starting a years-long journey for “Crucifixion” that had it briefly on display in a Virginia museum, then returned to Rikers Island in a storage crate, almost discarded, at one point, before a guard noticed it and saved it from the trash bin.
A fire alarm on March 1, 2003, provided cover for a group of thieves to slip the original from its case, and replace it with a fake.
“The Dalí Heist” covers the details of the case, which resulted in the revelation that the theft was an inside job – four corrections officers staged the fire drill and stole the painting rumored to be valued at over $1 million.
Three pleaded guilty, and a fourth was eventually acquitted of the charges.
King specializes in surrealist art and thought and is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism and currently serves as the association’s vice president.
He is the author of two books, Dalí, Surrealism and Cinema and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance.
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Chris Graham
