Supreme Court to Consider Klimt Lawsuit - Artworld

The U predominant Court recently announced that it would hear an appeal by the agency of the Austrian government in a case involving the ownership of six important paintings by means of Gustav Klimt, The paintings, which are at near in the Austrian Gallery in Vienna, are claimed through Maria Altmann, the niece and heir of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who holded them when they were confiscated by means of the Nazis in 1939.

Altmann has worn out decades trying to recover the works, which include Klimt's famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) a painting of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's wife that is individual of the highlights of the Austrian Gallery's collection. (The six works are valued at above $100 million.) For the last several years her lawsuit against Austria has been making its way end the U.S. legal system, despite arguments by dint of the Austrian government that U courts have no jurisdiction above the matter [see "Artworld," Feb '03] Altmann previously attempted to look for restitution of the paintings in an Austrian court, on the other hand was stymied by the requirement that she pay $2 million in filing fees

Austria claims that below the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, U citizens may not woo foreign governments in federal courts. Altmann and her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, struggle that she has the right to do thus on two grounds: first, the theft of the paintings occurr before 1952 when immunity for foreign nations became official U policy; next to the first the act provides an exemption for peculiarity taken in violation of international law.

If the first Court decides in Altmann's favor, her case against Austria will be permitted to proce in federal district court in beholds Angeles, where she lives. similar a decision could also affect other Holocaust-related lawsuits against foreign conducts including the case of sum of two units Egon Schiele paintings that were claimed by means of American citizens when they were upon loan to New York's Museum of new Art in 1997 [see "Front Page," Oct '00] The paramount Court has scheduled the case for hearing in January or February of nearest year and presumably will issue a decision by dint of the end of its confine in June 2004. While welcoming the justices' stir Schoenberg observed in a clan 30 e-mail that "unfortunately, this means a further delay in the case for Mr Altmann, who will be 88 years of advanced age in February."

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