Time Running Out for Justice on Nazi-Looted Art
It is time for Congress to pass the new HEAR Act and for museums to deliver provenance transparency, writes Gideon Taylor, the president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization.
In 1938, Paul and Alice Leffmann, a Jewish couple from Germany, made a desperate decision. Fleeing Nazi persecution, they entrusted a treasured Pablo Picasso painting to a non-Jewish German acquaintance, hoping it would survive the Second World War even if they might not.
The painting, The Actor (1904), has been hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since 1952. In 2016, Laurel Zuckerman, the Leffmanns’ heir, brought a case seeking its return, but her claim was rejected by the courts.
Laurel Zuckerman brought a case seeking the return to her family of a Picasso hanging in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Leffmanns ultimately negotiated the sale of the work—under duress, like so many forced sales of that era—to finance their escape to Brazil.
Author's summary: Museums must act on Nazi-looted art restitution.