Stolen Rockwell painting was sold

A Norman Rockwell painting that was stolen more than 30 years ago was sold in 1988, and federal officials now are trying to find out who bought it.

FBI officials said this week that the agency’s Art Crime Team, created in 2004, has several leads in the theft of Rockwell’s “Russian Schoolroom,” stolen in June 1973 from a suburban St. Louis exhibit and believed to be worth as much as $200,000 today.

It is believed the painting was advertised for sale in 1989 at a Rockwell exhibit in New York, but nobody made the connection until recently, officials said.

Linda Pero, curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., said she hadn’t even been aware until recently that the painting had been stolen.