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MFA wins court battle to keep painting owned by Jewish doctor in Vienna until the Nazis took over
By adamg on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 8:35pm
A federal appeals court in Boston ruled today the heir of a Jewish art collector in Vienna has no right to a painting by an early 20th-century expressionist that wound up at the MFA because she waited too long under Massachusetts law to file a claim.
At issue is "Two Nudes (Lovers)," by impressionist Oskar Kokoschka, which Dr. Oskar Reichel bought from the artist himself. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston acknowledged the exact reason why Reichel transferred ownership of the painting to a Jewish art dealer who had more luck getting out of Nazi-occupied Vienna "is not clear cut."
But, the judges continued, Claudia Seger-Thomschitz claim is governed by the Massachusetts three-year statute of limitations. And under a generous interpretation, she should have filed no later than 2006, three years after a Vienna museum agreed to given her other paintings Reichel sold under duress after the Nazis marched into Vienna. Because she did not formally seek the painting until 2007, she loses, the court ruled, noting that MFA information about the painting was readily available to the public.
Although the availability of some of these sources may not have been obvious to Seger-Thomschitz, who is a nurse with no specialized training in Nazi-era art claims, that fact does not excuse her delay. It was her burden under Massachusetts law to discover from the relevant professional communities whether she had a cognizable legal claim.
The court added:
Seger-Thomschitz did not submit her own affidavit to explain what she was doing between 2003 and 2007, a curious omission given that she is in the best position to account for that period. Her American attorney, whom she retained in 2006, submitted an affidavit in connection with her Rule 56(f) request in which he stated that Seger-Thomschitz and her Austrian attorney "had come to believe that all of the artwork that Oskar Reichel lost due to Nazi persecution had remained in Vienna and had been restituted." Of course, in light of all the publicly available information about the provenance of the Painting, a mistake of that sort does not delay the commencement of the limitations period. Any reasonable jury confronted with the summary judgment record would conclude that Seger-Thomschitz's causes of action accrued no later than the fall of 2003, when she learned that the Nazis had confiscated artworks from Dr. Reichel, and could then, with reasonable diligence, have discovered her claim to the Painting. Because she did not make a demand on the MFA until March 12, 2007, more than three years after her causes of action accrued, summary judgment was properly granted on the MFA's limitations defense.
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Comments
Heart breaking
I wonder if the decision can be appealed or the complaint refiled with the heir's affidavit. Is the painting regularly on display?
She didn't do her homework.
She didn't do her homework. Give it up and move on.
Cash Cows
The current tragedy involving these paintings is that distant descendants of previous owners see the art as cash cows. The paintings are legally stolen from community based owners (museums) and then are churned into cash by selling them back to museums (e.g., Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I).
Who wins? Distant descendants who more than likely have not any regard for the artwork. Who looses? The museums and galleries, and therefore the communities, where the artwork was exhibited.
Each piece of art in a museum tells a story. The artworks are part of the cultural wealth of the community. These stories, the intellectual and spiritual wealth embodied in the paintings, the opportunity to step away from the self and to see another via these paintings, are all stolen like a thief in the night when claims that are only tangentially connected to the artwork are allowed.
Let us know how you feel...
...the next time something gets stolen from you.
Regardless of whether the owners appreciate the art or not, it's theirs and they are free to what they wish with the art. Your statement seems to ignore the possibility that these people actually have ownership. Yes, art should be shared, but that's up to the owner. Maybe I'm reading more into your statements than was intended.
Now, whether this art is/was actually owned by these people - you got me.
Not just about reparations
This law balanced the rights of victims and heirs against the interests of the often powerful institutions that now held the works. It created a mechanism for return that kept many cases out of the courts as well.
This isn't just about returning works, either: it is meant to force museums to be more careful about the origins of the work they purchase. I find it hard to believe that some of the pieces acquired in the 50s were acquired with no knowledge that they were in fact stolen from private collections or taken or sold under extreme duress. They were, in effect, looted from Europe under suspicious conditions likely known to the institutions that purchased them. The best way to prevent this from giving looters incentive in future conflicts is to place some risk on the purchase.
Cutting off our noses to spite outselves
Restitution is supposed to be about justice. It is an injustice when an institution which honestly acquired, holds, preserves and exhibits art for the benefit of a community is judicially forced to give that art away. It is effectively legitimized theft.
The MFA is not a profit making company. It is part of the community. The art it is entrusted to hold, preserve and exhibit is part of our shared patrimony.
Or have we become so self-centered that the concept of a shared, or social patrimony is not longer part of our self-definition?
These spurious claims of inheritance is further tainted by the fact that the art then becomes a cash cow. The "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" was yanked from one public institution by a descendant claiming ownership, who then flipped it for over $100 million. The grand-niece involved in this transfer of wealth (ironically benefiting the New York public) purposely ignored the wishes of the aunt from whom she claimed inheritance. Claiming to be an heir and yet ignoring the clearly dictated intention of the ancestor: greed pure and simple. Granted greed by itself is merely a state of mind and can not be made illegal; yet it is state of mind that acted out is immoral.
A hypocrisy is further committed when this restitution is limited to Nazi war booty. To give this preferential treatment concerning claims of property to descendants of victims of Nazi horrors is to ignore the equally valid claims of other people who suffered attempts at genocide; otherwise Native Americans have valid claims for the land that their ancestors were forced to abandon.
Is it unfair, or even an injustice, that this descendant does not get to enjoy seeing the painting hang in her living room? That is a meaningless question. It is impossible to know whether the painting would have ever wound up on her living room wall had the Nazis never existed. For any number of reasons her uncle, or a direct inheritor, might have sold or given away the painting.
The niece suffered no loss; her property was never touched. She wants something that never belonged to her and under other circumstances merely might have passed on to her. She wants the painting (or money) because of might haves and could have beens.
I am glad the MFA won. It a wondrous painting and one which I would sorely miss if it was stolen by legal process.