Sunday, March 06, 2011

Art Litigation: Nazi Art Looting #art - Recent Developments in Federal Courts


Fides Trust/Fides Treuhand Founded in 1910 - Faithfully Concealing Nazi Art Looting Transactions For the Swiss http://www.fides.ch/


Nazi Art Looting - Case Developments [Compatibility Mode]

Above is a link to a Powerpoint Presentation I gave last week to the ABA Retirement Funds at the Ritz Carleton at Dove Mountain, outside Tucson, Arizona. It is similar to a presentation I gave last month to the Federal Bar Association's Phoenix Chapter.

As the Powerpoint above shows, a wave of decisions involving Nazi art looting hit the federal circuit courts of appeal in 2010 and it looks like the traffic will continue unabated.

Very few American legal scholars have addressed the questions relevant to stolen chattels in the hands of U.S. museums and private collectors and the consequences of the museum community's failure to squarely address its misconduct in receiving stolen art following World War II and by concealing its provenance to this day.   No one has surveyed the damage to the American taxpayer as wealthy Americans shielded their income from taxation by donating stolen works to U.S. museums.

The Internal Revenue Service should investigate this racket.

As can be seen from the Powerpoint, the American Association of Museums and the American Association of Museum Directors have betrayed the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art by suing descendants of Holocaust victims and by concealing their research into the provenance of artworks in their collections.   Rather than encouraging and publishing scholarship, museums hire large and expensive law firms, then cloak all research under "attorney client privilege".    This is simply the concealment of stolen property, a state and federal crime, with museums hiring law firms to cloak their criminal actions.

More on Nazi art looting here.

Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

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