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Kansas and Western District of Missouri Chapter: From Murder to Museums: Current Controversies Over Nazi-Looted Art
The program will kick off with a panel “introduction to art law” followed by Raymond Dowd’s presentation, which recounts epic legal battles including the seizure of two
stolen Schieles spotted at the Salon+Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory in
November 2015. The seizure and return of the artworks garnered international
headlines upon their restitution to the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, a Viennese cabaret
artist who was murdered in the Dachau Concentration Camp. The Schieles are now
at Christie’s while Grunbaum’s heirs continue to fight the London art dealers’
appeals.
The presentation traces Abraham Lincoln’s idea of taking the profit out of war
through the Lieber Code Executive Order 100 of April 1863, to the 1899 and 1907
Hague Conventions, to the Nuremberg Trials, demonstrating that returning stolen
property to Holocaust victims is consistent with American ideals and foreign
policy.
Dowd discusses how 1. Confiscatory US tax laws, 2. A fair market value deduction
for artworks donated to museums, and 3. An unwillingness of museums to look gift
horses in the mouth led to the current situation: US museums with large
inventories of unprovenanced works that left Europe after 1933, but were created
prior to 1946. History’s greatest robbery has long been concealed by history’s
greatest murder, Congress passing the HEAR Act of 2016 extended the statute of
limitations for Nazi looted art claims and reaffirmed America’s commitment to
righting an historic wrong.
Key note: Raymond J. Dowd: https://dunnington.com/raymond-j-dowd-2/
Panelists: Professor Michael H. Hoeflich https://law.ku.edu/people/michael-hoeflich
Kelly Anders (in her private capacity – not as a museum representative) https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellylynnanders/
More panelists TBD