The hunt for a stolen Jackson Pollock painting
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Decades after a brazen art theft drove Merry White’s father to despair, federal agents closed in on the missing work. For White, the search is personal.
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Merry White is the daughter of a Harvard professor who was close friends with painter Jackson Pollock. White’s parents came to own several of the painter’s artworks, and one hung over White’s bed when she was a child. It was stolen in 1973, along with two other paintings by Pollock. The theft destroyed White’s father's peace of mind, and left White with complicated feelings.
On this weekend episode of “Post Reports,” art critic Sebastian Smee reconstructs the provenance and theft of these precious works of art. Audio production and original music by Bishop Sand, with help from Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, this is Martin Powers. It's Saturday, January 10th, and this is Post Reports weekend. |
| 0:08.8 | Today, you're going to be hearing a story written, reported, and read by my colleague, post-art critic Sebastian Smee. |
| 0:15.9 | I don't want to preempt him at all, because it's a really beautiful story, So I'm just going to let Sebastian take it away from here. |
| 0:29.8 | Hi, I'm Sebastian Smee. What you're going to hear in a moment is a story I wrote about the theft of three works by Jackson Pollock, |
| 0:38.7 | from the home of a Harvard professor in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 0:42.9 | I'll be narrating the story. |
| 0:44.9 | It's broken into chapters, and there'll be some light music to immerse you in the piece. |
| 0:49.6 | The story's really in three parts. |
| 0:52.6 | It's about the special friendship between Jackson Pollock and the owner of the works, |
| 0:56.9 | Reginald Isaacs, whose daughter Mary White has unpleasant memories of visiting Pollock's home |
| 1:02.3 | on Long Island in the years leading up to his death in a car crash. |
| 1:07.3 | It's also about the theft itself, and it's about the recovery of two of the works. |
| 1:14.6 | It also recounts new information about the mystery of the third works whereabouts. |
| 1:19.6 | I guess I wanted to tell the story, not because I'm especially fascinated by art thefts, although I know a lot of people are, |
| 1:34.3 | but because I discovered that this particular art theft opened out onto some incredibly complex emotional wounds. |
| 1:37.4 | Okay, here's the story. |
| 1:48.3 | Mary White crumpled to the gallery floor. She'd been walking around the east building at the National Gallery of Art in 1984, when |
| 1:54.5 | she'd suddenly found herself standing in front of a painting by Jackson Pollock. |
| 1:59.5 | She recognized the work, a 1951 painting in black enamel on canvas, |
| 2:04.7 | splashy but not abstract, and was suddenly so overwhelmed that she felt her legs about to give |
| 2:11.1 | way. |
| 2:13.3 | Number 7, 1951, as the painting is titled, is from a brief period near the end of Pollack's life |
... |
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