The Grrl vs. MAN, Round 3: The Bloch-Bauer Klimts

Now Tyler, please don't reach for your blogroll eraser, but your story in the current Fortune magazine about Ronald Lauder's purchase of the Klimt is so important that it demands some reaction from CultureGrrl.

The story is a must-read for giving us the first detailed look at how the Klimt deal went down. I was particularly struck by this passage, which indicates that I might have had good reason for being Verklempt Over Klimt---worried about whether poor Adele Bloch-Bauer had finally found a safe, permanent haven:

Finally [Steven] Thomas [the Bloch-Bauer heirs' lawyer] said that the museum to which "Adele" was sold would have to have a secure, long-term future. (Lauder says that never came up, but Thomas mentioned it to me in two separate conversations.)

That condition had the potential to be thorny. The Neue Galerie [the museum co-founded by Lauder] is a mere toddler; its fifth birthday isn't until November.

On the other hand, I'm not sure I agree with Tyler's repeatedly stated premise that Lauder's purchase of the Klimt was a "grand gamble" or a "strategy," calculated to "turn an obscure museum into a must-see destination." While I'm sure he hopes for a permanent upsurge in Neue Galerie visitors, I believe that Lauder acquired Adele for the usual reason that impels object-besotted collectors to make extravagant purchases: He adored the work and had to have it.

More importantly, I also believe that Tyler may have partly misread the legal background of the Bloch-Bauer Klimts. I'll quote a passage from his piece in Fortune, followed by verbatim excerpts from the U.S. Court of Appeals decision (affirmed by the Supreme Court). You be the judge.

From Fortune:

Austria's strangest reason for not returning "Adele" and five other paintings was this: It claimed that Adele herself wanted the paintings to be given to Austria upon Ferdinand's death. In the late 1990s,...a journalist named Hubertus Czernin learned otherwise....He found that neither Ferdinand nor Adele had specified that any Klimts go to the Austrian state.

In the Court of Appeals decision (which did not itself rule on ownership, but merely said that the Bloch-Bauer heirs' case against Austria could be tried in U.S. courts), Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw gave this more nuanced account:

Before Adele's untimely passing in 1925,...obviously oblivious to the terror to come, which would dramatically affect Austria generally and her husband Ferdinand intimately, Adele left a will "kindly" requesting that Ferdinand donate the paintings to the Austrian Gallery upon his death....Ferdinand died in Switzerland in November 1945. He left a will, revoking all prior wills, and leaving his entire estate to one nephew and two nieces, including Maria Altmann....

Altmann contends that under both Austrian and and American law, precatory language such as that set forth in Adele's last will and testament, kindly asking another to bequeath his property, is unenforceable and ineffective to dispose of that property. To be effective, the will must contain a command or order as to the disposition of property.

It appears that Adele DID want the paintings eventually to be given to Austria. Then, after her death, times horrifically changed. Luckily, she acted the well-mannered lady, and used in her will the "precatory" word, "kindly."

The rest is history.