UPDATE 2: The truck has been found, according to SPD spokesman Mark Jamieson, but the art was not in it. The truck was parked on the 3400 block of SW Walnut Street in West Seattle yesterday morning. The FBI will post the art to its stolen art database, but SPD is handling the case. Detective Hiro Yamashita is the contact; call him with tips at 206-684-8945. (Kucera is offering the reward; see below for his contact.) There are seven artworks missing, all by Whiting Tennis, the largest a woodblock print and oil on paper mounted on panel that's 72 by 96 inches and titled Document (aka New England Prospect). Jamieson will be posting images of all the missing art on the SPD Blotter today.

GONE Whiting Tenniss Blue Hamburger, acrylic and collage on canvas, 56 by 90 inches.
  • Courtesy the artist and Greg Kucera Gallery
  • GONE Whiting Tennis's Blue Hamburger, acrylic and collage on canvas, 56 by 90 inches.

A 16-foot Budget rental truck containing seven paintings by Whiting Tennis was stolen at 145th and Aurora on Thursday morning sometime between midnight and 2 am, according to an email from Greg Kucera Gallery, which represents the artist.

The truck was parked at the Holiday Inn Express parking lot. It was a Ford 350 model with the Oklahoma license plate 2TM878. All of the paintings, on canvas and wood, were wrapped in cardboard and plastic.

With any information, call SPD Detective Sargent Backstrom at 206-684-8948, or Auto Theft Detective Tracy Puffner at 206-684-4762. Or call Kucera at 206-235-0525.

GONE Whiting Tenniss Hotel, 2011, painted wood, 30 by 71 inches.
  • GONE Whiting Tennis's Hotel, 2011, painted wood, 30 by 71 inches.
This theft is bizarre. Did the thief want the truck, or the art? Was other art in the truck? Where was it headed? I'm waiting to hear back from Kucera today. The email came in late Friday. In the meantime, Whiting, we're so sorry.

UPDATE: No leads yet. Greg Kucera Gallery is offering a reward. He believes the thieves had no idea this truck contained art when they stole it. "The question now is what do they do to the art," he said in a phone conversation just now. "We are simply trying to get the word out that we fully expect that these paintings could be just sitting somewhere in a parking lot having been dumped out by these guys thinking, 'What are these crazy things?'" They're not in fancy gold frames. ...We're offering a reward in the hopes that maybe they would sense there's something to be gained by letting us know where these are, or maybe leading us to them. Or that somebody peripherally involved who hears about this will think, 'I'm gonna get that reward.' We don't care who comes forward."