Museums and Holocaust Heirs: An Update
The hunt 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 one of Picasso's "Weeping Women" paintings, several Monets, a Cézanne and a Max Beckmann, was made up at the behest of the U.K.'s National Museums Directors Conference.
Among the institutions holding large numbers of suspect art works are two of Britain's most important museums, the Tate Gallery (80 works) and the National Gallery (100 works). Not all of this was new information-the National Gallery's holdings of dubious origins were made public last year, and have yet to draw any claimants [see "Front Page," May '99].
As the sponsors of the project pointed out, the presence of a work on the list indicates only some area of uncertainty in its provenance for the years 1933-45, not conclusive evidence of a Nazi link. After the report was issued, Tate director Nicholas Serota explained that "inclusion simply means that more information is needed to eliminate them [the works of art completely from suspicion." This inclusiveness has led some in Britain, such as the conservative art critic Brian Sewell of the Evening Standard, to accuse the museums of being "overscrupulous" by listing works that were almost certainly in Britain throughout the period in question.
The next phase of the project will involve further research into each of the listed works. If evidence is found of a Nazi-loot connection, information about the work in question will be publicized in the hope of alerting owners of their heirs.
In a related story, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced in February that after four months 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 Gerta Silberberg, who lives in Leicester, England [see "Front Page," Sept. '99]. In 1935, Silberberg's father-in-law, Max Silberberg of Breslau, was forced by the Nazis to sell the painting to a German collector for less than its true value. After the war, the painting was bought by the American collectors John and Frances Loeb, who bequeathed it to the Israel Museum in 1997. Since taking title, Ms. Silberberg has made a long-term loan of the painting to the museum.
Last year, she successfully reclaimed from the Berlin National Gallery a van Gogh drawing that had also belonged to her father-in-law.
Closer to home, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh recently conceded that a 16th-century painting by 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 turned up in New York and was bought by George and Marianne Khuner, who subsequently donated it to the North Carolina Museum of Art. While the museum has announced its willingness to return the Cranach to von Gomperz's heirs in Vienna, it hopes to find a way to keep the painting in Raleigh.
No such willingness is evident in Vienna itself, where the Austrian government has taken steps to block a lawsuit over the ownership of six Gustav Klimt paintings in the Austrian National Gallery. The works in question include one of Klimt's best-known paintings, the resplendent Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907). In her will Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925, requested that her husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, leave the Klimts to the National Gallery upon his death. After the Nazi takeover in 1938, the wealthy Bloch-Bauer fled Austria, leaving behind everything he owned. He died in exile in 1945. For the last half century, 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.
Under the terms of a 1998 law, Austrian museums are required to turn over works seized by the Nazis. The National Gallery insists that the Klimts don't fall into the category of looted works (despite the fact that they were stolen by 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 out that Adele's wish is not enforceable under Austrian law and that, therefore, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was legally entitled to pass the Klimts on 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 events 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 to an Austrian museum.
Following an official committee's rejection of her claims on the works [see "Front Page," Sept. ''99], Altmann announced her intention last fall to bring a lawsuit against the National Gallery. The Austrian government required that Altmann deposit several million dollars before the lawsuit could proceed (money intended to cover court costs, should Altmann lose). In November, a Vienna court granted a partial waiver that reduced the amount to $400,000, but the government appealed this decision, insisting that Altmann and the other Bloch-Bauer heirs also deposit funds equal to the value of a set of porcelain and some Klimt drawings that had been earlier returned 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 U.S.
Among those who have spoken out in favor of Altmann, who is a U.S. citizen, is Ronald S. Lauder, chairman of the Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress. In his Feb. 10 testimony before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Lauder characterized the situation facing Altmann as "daunting, expensive, time-consuming, and dismaying, since courts are often not politically independent." He also urged the U.S. State Department to look into the matter.
It is unclear whether the current political turmoil in Austria will have any effect on the Bloch-Bauer case, which last year moved 100 Austrian intellectuals to sign a petition urging the return of the paintings. The minister in charge of culture at the time, Elizabeth Gehrer of the People's Party, who appeared to some as unsympathetic to the claimants, was reappointed to her cabinet post in the coalition government that includes the right-wing Freedom Party [see "Artworld"]. In addition, the continuing anger of some Austrians over the impounding of two Egon Schieles in New York [see "Artworld," Nov. '99] may also work against the Bloch-Bauer heirs. On the other hand, if a settlement could be reached, the embattled Austrian government could no doubt hope to improve its international image.
