Cashing In on Restituted Nazi Loot

NY Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman trod on delicate ground yesterday, when he suggested that Nazi victims or their heirs might do well to consider a more public-spirited response to restitution of their family treasures than immediately cashing them in at auction, as is about to happen with the four Klimts owned by the Bloch-Bauer heirs. For this, he got a blogging flogging yesterday from Modern Art Notes, re-posted today on ArtsJournal's main page.

CultureGrrl thinks that Kimmelman has a legitimate, if controversial, point. On June 21, I addressed this sensitive issue this way:

Nazi victims or their heirs who have been fortunate enough to receive restitution of expropriated artworks get justifiably testy if anyone suggests that they consider anything but their own financial self-interest is determining the disposition of these works. After all, they are the rightful owners; no one else has any right to tell them what to do with privately owned art.

As a practical matter, this has sometimes meant that masterpieces previously in the public domain are sold into the private domain, to the highest bidder....Even the lawyer who forged the heirs' legal victory, Randol Schoenberg, has publicly expressed some regret that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (which is currently displaying the iconic Klimt, along with four other works by the same artist that were returned to the same heirs) was unable to swing a deal to buy all five paintings.

MAN's Tyler Green is right that the Bloch-Bauer heirs "are the aggrieved party" and "are under no obligation to do any particular anything [sic] with the paintings." Kimmelman and Rosenbaum recognize this. But we also feel that a public-spirited disposition of such art would underscore the point that righting the wrongs of the Holocaust is, above all, an issue of principle, not personal gain.

I'll get myself in even more trouble than Kimmelman by taking this one step further: Rushing to auction rather than cherishing objects that were once important to lost loved ones reinforces the pernicious stereotype that we Jews are always up against---that we are enamored of money. Nazi victims' heirs are under absolutely no obligation to worry about, let alone mitigate, this stereotype. I recognize this. But I'd feel better if some beneficiaries of restitution would create living memorials to their family members---in public institutions, perhaps located in the cities that gave some of their family members refuge and a good life.