The Artwork Institute of Chicago (AIC) has come beneath hearth from the Manhattan District Lawyer’s workplace for partaking in alleged “willful blindness” concerning Nazi-looted work in its assortment.
Investigators making an attempt to grab a drawing by Egon Schiele from the museum’s holdings filed a 160-page movement on 23 February that accuses the AIC of ignoring fraudulent provenance in its acquisition of the piece. The drawing in query, Russian Struggle Prisoner, was bought by the museum in 1966 and is considered one of a number of works by the artist sought by the descendants of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret artist and artwork collector from Vienna murdered by Nazis. Investigators decided that the work was value upwards of $1.2m; the museum acquired it for $5,500 (roughly $53,000 in at the moment’s {dollars}), The New York Occasions reported.
“We have now executed in depth analysis on the provenance historical past of this work and are assured in our lawful possession of the piece,” a consultant for the AIC stated in a press release. “If we had this work unlawfully, we might return it, however that’s not the case right here.”
The current court docket submitting refutes this argument, alleging that the museum’s “failure” to vet the work “undercuts any arguments that AIC have been really good-faith purchasers.”
A lot of the filings’ contents have been cited in earlier civil instances by Grünbaum’s heirs and resulted in seven museums agreeing to show over works to the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The AIC has argued that the heirs got here ahead too late to put declare to this explicit drawing, underscoring a federal court docket’s earlier ruling and insisting that the piece may have been inherited by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, who the museum alleges offered the Schieles to a Swiss seller within the Nineteen Fifties.
In over 100 separate reveals, investigators contend that the seller, Eberhard Kornfeld, altered provenance paperwork and solid signatures lengthy after the items got here into his possession. “There may be one individual on this case who doctored” paperwork, “and at all times did so in pencil — Eberhard Kornfeld”, the chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, Matthew Bogdanos, famous within the court docket submitting.
In response to investigators, whereas nobody will be sure of how Kornfeld obtained the Schieles, there’s a robust chance that it was by way of Nazi-linked liaisons. Prosecutors say that they’ve situated stock information establishing the work’s presence in an Austrian Nazi-controlled storehouse in 1938—after Grünbaum was despatched to Dachau, the place he was killed in 1941. Prosecutors have additionally discovered paperwork displaying that his sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, fled the nation whereas the drawing was within the storage facility, proving that she couldn’t have offered it to Kornfeld.
The AIC first argued that it holds official title to the work in a 2011 ruling, by which the decide characterised Kornfeld’s account as “credible”. In a second New York case that resolved in November of 2023, the court docket awarded possession of the drawing to the AIC, ruling that the Grünbaum heirs had waited too lengthy to make a declare. Regardless of these choices, the New York State Supreme Courtroom declared in 2018 that Grünbaum had by no means offered or surrendered any works in his assortment earlier than his loss of life—these have been looted by Nazis, and his heirs have been the rightful homeowners.
In a press release, representatives for the AIC stated, “Federal court docket has explicitly dominated that the Grünbaums’ Schiele artwork assortment was ‘not looted’ and ‘remained within the Grünbaum household’s possession’ and was offered by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law Mathilde Lukacs in 1956.”
The AIC represents a uncommon holdout within the Nazi-restitution dialog—the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Allen Memorial Artwork Museum at Oberlin School and New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork and Morgan Library & Museum, together with the property of the collector Serge Sabarsky and cosmetics mogus Ronald S. Lauder, have all agreed to return works to the Grünbaum household.
