[MSN] Stolen from St. Peter's College over the weekend, a $35, 000 painting was recovered Monday night from a convicted drug dealer dragging it down a Jersey City street.

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$35G painting found being dragged down Jersey City street, cops say
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Stolen from St. Peter's College over the weekend, a $35,000 painting was
recovered Monday night from a convicted drug dealer dragging it down a
Jersey City street, officials said.

The painting, part of series titled "Reality of Unreality," was created by
Stephen Sacklarian, who died in 1983.

"I think it's wonderful there are art critics who are able to appreciate
wonderful paintings and will go to any length to acquire them," joked Arthur
Furman of Ethel A. Furman & Associates in Virginia, the sole U.S. dealer of
Sacklarian's work.

At 9:09 p.m. Monday police spotted Paul Minor, 46, of Jewett Avenue,
dragging the large painting down Monticello Avenue, reports said.

Minor told the cops he found the painting near Fairmount Avenue but wouldn't
say more and was arrested on the charge of receiving stolen property,
reports said.

Charges against Minor could be upgraded if it is determined he was involved
in the theft of the painting, officials said.

Minor has served time in prison for drug possession and dealing drugs near a
school, state corrections officials said.

The 1977 painting was donated to St. Peter's two decades ago and since then
had been hanging in the first-floor hallway of Hilsdorf Faculty Memorial
Hall, a building on Glenwood Avenue just east of Kennedy Boulevard, said a
St. Peter's fine arts professor, the Rev. Oscar Magnan S.J. The painting was
brought to Magnan's studio yesterday afternoon and he will find a safer
place on campus for it.

The painting was last seen on Friday evening by the Rev. Mark Destephano,
S.J., and on Monday morning he noticed it was missing, Magnan said.
Officials said the college did not report it missing immediately because it
was not known whether it might have been moved for some legitimate reason.
By Monday evening police detectives were investigating.

Sacklarian's paintings are in more than 60 museums around the world,
including the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of American Art
and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He traveled extensively and visited with
Picasso, Matisse, Henry Moore, Gorky and others, according to Furman, his
art dealer.

Sacklarian's art is populated with amorphous figures and whimsical forms
that often float against bright, angular backgrounds or subtle dark fields
of color. His work has sold at auction at Phillip's, Christie's and
Sotheby's, according to Ethel A. Furman & Associates. Furman said the
highest sale price he knows of for a Sacklarian work is $50,000.

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