Posted on: April 7, 2016 by Emily Gould
Significant developments on three of the stories we’ve been watching closely of late appeared in the news this week: Firstly, that the deferral on an export licence for the Sekhemka Statue has now been lifted, so it will almost certainly be leaving these shores before too long. Secondly, that pieces from the Gurlitt art hoard […]
Posted on: January 8, 2016 by Alexander Herman
Since our last report on the Gurlitt case, there have been several developments. What better way, then, to begin the new year with a post on a story that has been unfolding since 2013? Plus ça change… The German-Bavarian appointed Task Force has now been folded into the German Lost Art Foundation, which will continue administering the remaining […]
Posted on: December 4, 2015 by Alexander Herman
On Wednesday, the Center for Art Law hosted an event at the Ongpin Fine Art Gallery in London to celebrate the launch of Evelien Campfens’s new book on the subject of Holocaust-era art restitution committees entitled Fair and Just Solutions? Alternatives to litigation in Nazi-looted art disputes: status quo and new developments. Campfens, who is the […]
Posted on: October 9, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Following on from my last post about two recent reports from the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel (SAP) regarding Nazi-looted art in British public collections, it was reported this summer that Glasgow City Council has followed an earlier SAP recommendation in relation to a 16th century tapestry fragment held at the city’s Burrell Collection. The November 2014 report recommended that an ex gratia payment (literally meaning […]
Posted on: October 2, 2015 by Alexander Herman
An art exhibition in Norway is built around a work by Henri Matisse, Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair, and yet the work isn’t even there. The Henie Onstad Museum returned the work in March 2014 to the heirs of Paul Rosenberg, the famous Parisian art dealer whose collection of masterpieces had been looted by the Nazis […]
Posted on: September 24, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The Spoliation Advisory Panel, the UK body that hears disputes relating to Nazi-looted art held in national collections, has delivered two important reports this month. The first is a follow-up on an earlier 2014 recommendation that the Tate return a Constable painting, ‘Beaching a Boat, Brighton’, to the descendants of the painting’s original owner, Baron Hatvany of Hungary. The Baron had […]
Posted on: August 6, 2015 by Alexander Herman
It has been some time since we discussed the Gurlitt affair in these pages. And what has happened since? Well, the challenge to Gurlitt’s will by his cousin Uta Werner has continued on. It is now before the Higher Regional Court in Munich (Oberlandesgericht München) and just last month the Court requested a psychological opinion concerning Gurlitt’s competence […]
Posted on: July 17, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The dispute before the California courts between the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation and the descendants of Lily Cassirer Neubauer has now entered its second decade. Neubauer was forced to sell a painting by Pissarro before fleeing Germany in 1939 and her heirs now claim that it should be returned to them from the Spanish Foundation, the painting’s current possessor. The action brought […]
Posted on: April 17, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Last month, the Dutch Restitutions Committee published its recommendation regarding a claim brought forward by the heirs of the three Stettiner siblings who ran the Stettiner Gallery in Paris until it was closed during the Second World War. The claim involved a portrait by Salomon Koninck (1609-1656) entitled Old Man with Beard, which currently forms part […]
Posted on: April 16, 2015 by Alexander Herman
‘What do you know about art restitution?’ ‘Not a thing.’ The question comes from Maria Altmann, played by Helen Mirren, and the answer is from her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, played by Ryan Reynolds, in Woman in Gold, the film dramatising Altmann’s quest for the return of five Gustav Klimt paintings that had been taken from her family during the […]