NY Museums Required To Label The Last Prisoners Of World War II

Published date05 September 2022
Subject MatterCorporate/Commercial Law, Consumer Protection, Charities & Non-Profits , Education
Law FirmSheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton
AuthorZach Dai

The artworks stolen by the Nazis are the last prisoners of World War II.

- Ronald Lauder, Woman in Gold

Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy sugar magnate in Vienna, Austria where his six Gustav Klimt paintings were housed. His wife, Adele Bloch-Bauer, was the subject of two of the paintings. On March 12, 1938, the Nazis invaded and claimed to annex Austria. Ferdinand, who was Jewish and had supported efforts to resist annexation, fled the country ahead of the Nazis, ultimately settling in Zurich. In his absence, the Nazis took over his home and seized his artworks, which included the Klimt paintings. Adele Bloch-Bauer I is one of them and ended up at the Austrian Gallery.

After a long-lasting legal battle over the ownership of the painting in the U.S. Supreme Court1 and an arbitration in Austria2, the painting was eventually returned to Maria Altmann, the niece and heir of Ferdinand who resided in California after fleeing from Austria. In a later private sale in 2006, Jewish philanthropist Ronald Lauder bought the painting for $135 million to display in his Neue Galerie, located at 5th Ave, New York.3

A careful visitor to Neue Galerie will probably find there is a sign acknowledging some of the historical facts mentioned above. This is because, on August 10, 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a new requirement that museums with works of art which changed hands through theft, seizure, confiscation, forced sale, or other involuntary means during the Nazi era in Europe to display a sign acknowledging such information.

As a matter of fact, New York state attested that the Nazis looted some 600,000 paintings from Jewish people during World War II, as part of the Third Reich's crimes committed to eliminating all vestiges of Jewish identity and culture. Many eventually made their way to museums in New York, and museums displayed these stolen art pieces with no recognition of or transparency around their origins.4 Introduced on January 28, 2021, and passed with a unanimous vote in New York State Assembly, this new legislation was part of a legislative package aimed to honor and support Holocaust survivors, of whom there are an estimated 40,000 in New York state. 5

Incorporated into New York Education Law ' 233-aa as the 15th subdivision, this new, one-sentence law provides: "Every museum which has on display any identifiable works of art known to have been created before nineteen hundred forty-five and which changed hands due to theft, seizure...

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