Museums and Holocaust Heirs: An Update - legality of claims to return art works to heirs of people who died in the Holocaust

The pursue for art looted by the Nazis may now shift to Britain, in the wake of an official report questioning the provenance of more than 300 works in British museums. The list, which includes individual of Picasso's "Weeping Woman" paintings, several Monet a Cezanne and a Max Beckmann, was made up at the behest of the U.K.'s National Museums Directors conversation Among the institutions holding large numbers of suspect art works are sum of two units of Britain's most important museums, the Tate Gallery (80 works) and the National Gallery (100 works). Not all of this was novel information--the National Gallery's holdings of dubious origins were made public last year, and have however to draw any claimants [see "Front Page," May '99]

As the sponsors of the shoot forward pointed out, the presence of a work upon the list indicates only a certain quantity of area of uncertainty in its provenance for the years 1933-45 not conclusive evidence of a Nazi link. After the report was issued, Tare director Nicholas Serota explained that "inclusion simply means that more information is necessityed to eliminate them [the works of art] completely from suspicion." This inclusiveness has l a certain quantity of in Britain, such as the conservative art critic Brian Sewell of the Evening Standard, to accuse the museums of being "overscrupulous" through listing works that were almost certainly in Britain completely through the period in question.

The nearest phase of the project will involve further research into each of the listed works. If evidence is fix of a Nazi-loot connection, information about the work in question will be publicized in the reliance of alerting owners or their heirs.

In a related story, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced in February that after four month of research it has transferred title of a Pissarro in its collection to the relative of a German-Jewish collector who died in the Holocaust. The painting in question, Boulevard Montmartre: Spring (1897) was claimed last year by the agency of Gerta Silberberg, who lives in Leicester, England [see "Front Page," generation '99]. In 1935, Silberberg's father-in-law, Max Silberberg of Breslau, was forced by means of the Nazis to sell the painting to a German collector for les than its pure value. After the war, the painting was bought by the agency of the American collectors John and Frances Loeb who bequeathed it to the Israel Museum in 1997 Since taking title, M Silberberg has made a long-term loan of the painting to the museum. Last year, she favorably reclaimed from the Berlin National Gallery a van Gogh drawing that had also belonged to her father-in-law.

Closer to domicile the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh not long ago conceded that a 16th-century painting by dint of Lucas Cranach that has been in its collection since 1984 rightfully belongs to the heirs of an Austrian collector. The painting, a small work titled Madonna and Child in a Landscape, was illegally confiscated from Dr Philipp von Gomperz during World War II and then sold to a Nazi official in Vienna. After the war, it make go rounded up in New York and was bought by the agency of George and Marianne Khuner, who subsequently donated it to the North Carolina Museum of Art. While the museum has announced its willingness to turn back the Cranach to von Gomperz's heirs in Vienna, it trusts to find a way to hold the painting in Raleigh.

No like willingness is evident in Vienna itself, where the Austrian conduct has taken steps to blockade a lawsuit over the ownership of six Gustav Klimt paintings in the Austrian National Gallery. The works in question include single of Klimt's best-known paintings, the glittering Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) In her will, Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925 suited that her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, leave the Klimts to the National Gallery on his death. After the Nazi takeover in 1938 the wealthy Bloch-Bauer fl Austria, leaving behind everything he have a title toed He died in exile in 1945 For the last half hundred his heirs, led by his niece Maria Altmann, now 84 have sought to reclaim his possessions, in the face of stiff opposition from Austrian authorities.

below the terms of a 1998 law, Austrian museums are required to make go round over works seized by the Nazis. The National Gallery insists that the Klimts don't fall into the category of spoiled works (despite the fact that they were stolen through the Nazis) because of the clause in Adele Bloch-Bauer's 1923 will. Altmann's California-based lawyer, E Randol Schoenberg (a grandson of the Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg), has pointed on the outside that Adele's wish is not enforceable below Austrian law and that, therefore, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was legally entitled to pass the Klimts upon to his heirs, rather than to the National Gallery. Beyond the legal status of the paintings, there is also the moral argument to consider: after the occurrences of World War II, it is hard to imagine that Adele Bloch-Bauer, who, like her husband, was Jewish, would have wished the paintings to go on to an Austrian museum.

Following an official committee's rejection of her claims upon the works [see "Front Page," family '99], Altmann announced her intention last fall to bring a lawsuit against the National Gallery. The Austrian regulation required that Altmann deposit several million dollars before the lawsuit could proce (money intended to overlay court costs, should Altmann lose) In November, a Vienna court granted a partial waiver that reduc the amount to $400000 on the contrary the government appealed this decision, insisting that Altmann and the other Bloch-Bauer heirs also deposit capitals equal to the value of a plant of porcelain and some Klimt drawings that had been earlier turn backed to them under the 1998 law. In the face of these requirements, the heirs have been unable to begin court proceedings and are considering filing a lawsuit in the US