#art MoMA's Problematic Provenances - George Grosz

Willi Baumeister no title 1928 (collage for Alfred Flechtheim)  image Artvalue here.

Excellent article by William Cohan on MoMA's concealment of the provenances of artworks in Alfred Flechtheim's 1933 inventory in December 2011 Art News here.  Alfred Flechtheim, depicted above by Willi Baumeister, was the most prominent contemporary art dealer of the Weimar Republic.  Scandal erupted over claims by the heirs of George Grosz that Grosz had left artworks now at MoMA in the hands of Flechtheim, who in turn was "Aryanized" by a Nazi from Dusseldorf named Alexander Voemel in 1933.

Cohan's article points out how MoMA has tried to erase Flechtheim from art history.

The MoMA, like a number of other U.S. museums, has used statutes of limitations to hold onto stolen art, even though museum administrators and trustees had concealed information that would permit heirs to make claims for decades.

MoMA Executive Glenn Lowry misled the Grosz heirs by claiming that he had no authority to refuse their claims to the three artworks in question and had not refused their claims to the artworks.    MoMA, represented by the Proskauer law firm, then changed its position, claiming that Lowry actually did have the authority to refuse the claims and that he'd actually refused the claims much earlier than he had by simply not returning the artworks.   

MoMA was successful in convincing federal judges that the "refusal" had triggered New York's three year statute of limitations.

You can read the cert petition in Grosz v MoMA here.   You can read the Second Circuit's opinion here.

It should shock the conscience of Americans that museums can use statutes of limitations to hold onto stolen art, the acquisition of which has been subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.    Rich people should not be able to avoid paying taxes by taken art stolen from Jews in the Holocaust and putting it into U.S. museums where it is hidden from scrutiny - often for decades.

Cohan does an excellent job of outing Nazi agent Curt Valentin.   More on Valentin here and here.

More on Alfred Flechtheim here and here and here.

The first part of Laurie Stein's declassified Swiss report (reference by Cohan) here.

(disclosure - the author represented the Grosz heirs in Grosz v. MoMA).

 http://www.dunnington.com/rdowd_bio.html
 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2011 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Declassified Swiss Government Report Shows Traffic of Nazi Looted Art To Museum of Modern Art (Updated)

Link to image in St. Louis Commerce, full article here

A declassified Swiss government report written by former Pulitzer Foundation director Laurie Stein shows that Nazi looted art passed through Switzerland to arrive at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As set forth in Laurie Stein's report, Curt Valentin, August Klipstein, and Karl Buchholz were key players in this traffic with Alfred Barr.   MoMA has "the highest concentration of degenerate art from Germany"..... Alfred Barr "did not shy away from buying confiscated art through American-based commercial dealers such as [Curt] Valentin."  (pp 11-12).

Hitler's Swiss Dealer - August Klipstein of Gutekunst & Klipstein, now Galerie Kornfeld

Laurie Stein just chaired a panel in Vienna on Alfred Flechtheim, one of the Weimar Republic's leading art dealers whose gallery was Aryanized by SA officer Alexander Voemel shortly after Hitler took power in 1933.   More on Alfred Flechtheim here, Picasso's Jewish Dealer here, Flechtheim's Nose here, Amicus brief in Grosz v MoMA here, Flechtheim's Portrait By Belling here, Museum directors should be prosecuted for concealing stolen art here .

American museums continue to resist inquiries into the stolen works in their collections.

For more, read below.
Stein Pyritz - Swiss Government Report



 http://www.dunnington.com/rdowd_bio.html
 Purchase Copyright Litigation Handbook 2010 by Raymond J. Dowd from West here  

Audio Recording and Powerpoint of Nazi Art Looting Presentation at Yad Vashem

Egon Schiele's Self-Seers - Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum and Still Missing

Last week I gave a lecture at Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research in Jerusalem.   I dealt with the problems faced by attorneys who need to prove that the Holocaust happened and to prove that transactions involving Nazi persecutees during the period 1933-1945 were presumptively duress transactions.

If you would like to listen to my presentation, the link is here.   The Powerpoint presentation that illustrates the audio is here.  The invitation reproduced below.

The International Institute for Holocaust Research-Yad Vashem


cordially invites you to attend the lecture

Egon Schiele's Dead City

Current Issues In Nazi Art Looting and Recovery
Raymond Dowd, Esq.

Partner - Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller LLP New York

Wednesday, 24 February 2010

10:00-12:00

Lecture Hall, Room 223, Administration and Research Building

Yad Vashem, Mount of Remembrance

In 1998, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau seized Egon Schiele's Dead City and Portrait of Wally at New York's Museum of Modern Art, creating a scandal that changed the legal landscape of Europe and the United States for victims of Nazi persecution and their survivors. Ray Dowd represents the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer murdered in the Dachau Concentration Camp. Fritz's wife Lily died in the Minsk Death Camp. Grunbaum's art collection surfaced in Switzerland in 1956 under disputed circumstances, and in the first Holocaust-era art recovery trial in U.S. history, Bakalar v. Vavra, the District Court found that passing the artwork through Switzerland gave it clean title. The case is on appeal. Many of Fritz's artworks are in the Leopold Museum and the Albertina Museum in Austria. In over ten years, Austria has not even bothered to respond to the heirs' claims.