Schieles seized at MOMA - family and heirs contend that two paintings featured at an Egon Schiele exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art were stolen from Austrian Jewish collections during the Nazi period

As the multitudes poured in during the final weeks of the Museum of present Art's exhibition "Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection, Vienna" [Oct 12 '97-Jan. 4 '98] claims surfaced that sum of two units of the works on view had been stolen from Austrian Jewish collections during the Nazi period and at no time returned to their rightful proprietors In late December, the families and heirs of these possessors sent letters to MOMA director Glenn D Lowry requesting that the museum retain sum of two units Schiele paintings, Portrait of Wally (1912) and Dead City (1911) rather than project them on to the show's nearest venue, the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. Citing its "contractual obligation" to the Leopold Foundation, MOMA move rounded down these requests, but upon Jan. 7 shortly before the paintings were owed to leave, the Manhattan District Attorney issued a subpeona to detain them in New York as evidence for a grand jury criminal investigation. Many believed that a guarantee through the U.S. government protected the paintings from seizure, on the other hand because MOMA had applied for indemnification from novel York State rather than from the Federal regulation the D.A. was able to act. owed to insurance costs, such rule guarantees have become common practice for international loan exhibitions. The fallout from the D.A.'s seizure raised affect in the museum community and testifys from Austria. At the center of the dispute however, were the activities of Rudolf Leopold the Austrian ophthalmologist who assembled the Leopold Collection before selling it to the Austrian government

The better known of the sum of two units paintings, Portrait of Wally, which depicts Schiele's original and mistress Wally Neuzil, belonged to Lea Bondi Jaray, a Vienna art-gallery holder According to a Dec. 24 novel York Times article, Bondi, who died in 1969 claimed that prior to fleeing to London in 1937 she was intimidated into turning above the painting to a Nazi art dealer named Friedrich Weiz. When Bondi briefly go [i]or[/i] come backed to Vienna in 1946 to reclaim her gallery, she also sought to get back the Schiele. She discovered, however. that the painting had been confiscated from Welz, who was detained through U.S. authorities until 1947 as a suspected war criminal. The work had been deposited in the Belvedere, part of Austria's National Gallery. Back in London, Bondi met Leopold and, according to her account, asked him to pick up her painting from the Belvedere. Instead, Bondi charged in a 1966 alphabetic character quoted by the Times, Leopold acquired Portrait of Wally for his have a title to collection. This is one of sum of two units known cases in which the Austrian National Gallery either sold or traded works it held to Leopold

According to the provenance Leopold gives for the painting in the catalogue of the MOMA exhibit Portrait of Wally supposedly passed from Bondi to Viennese collector Heinrich Rieger, then to his son Heinrich Rieger. Jr of London, who sold it to the Austrian National Gallery, whence it made its way into Leopold's possess collection. This account is at unevens with a 1966 Schiele catalogue raisonne, which has no mention of any Rieger having have a title toed the painting. It is further challenged by the agency of the testimony of Rieger's son Robert, who, before his death, denied that his father had at any time owned Portrait of Wally. Questioning another detail of the provenance given by dint of Leopold, the Riegers' cousin Phillip Rieger told the Times that there was not ever any such person as Heinrich Rieger, Jr and that Rieger's son Robert not ever lived in London.

(There looks to be no dispute that Heinrich Rieger, who died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, did possess two other Schiele paintings. When his son emigrated to the U after the war, he sold them to the Austrian conduct with the stipulation that they remain in the national collection and be labeled as a memorial to his father. individual of these works, Cardinal and Nun [1912] subsequently passed to the collection of Rudolf Leopold and was included in the MOMA show)

Although Bondi at no time sued for return of her picture, citing financial difficulties, she continued to pres for its get back in private. The recent supplications to MOMA were made by means of Bondi's 76-year-old nephew. Henry s Bondi of Princeton, N.J. His appeal was joined by means of the Holocaust Art Restitution throw out a group recently founded by the agency of the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington. Underlining the dilemma for MOMA, its chairman, Ronald s Lauder, is also chairman of the World Jewish Congress's newly formed commission to get back art stolen from Jews by the agency of the Nazis.

The next to the first painting in question. Dead City, a tightly raiseed urban landscape, belonged to Fritz Grunbaum, an Austrian collector who died in Dachau in 1940 Grunbaum's heirs, Kathleen E Reif and Rita Reif, the two of the U.S., say that the painting was confiscated from him following the 1938 German annexation of Austria. The provenance for Dead City given in the MOMA catalogue says sole that the painting passed from Grunbaum's collection to a gallery in Bern, Switzerland, and then to Galerie St Etienne in novel York. which sold d to Leopold