Free "Portrait of Wally"!
Carol Kino's article in today's NY Times "Museums" section about Stolen Artworks and the Lawyers Who Reclaim Them (less charitably termed "Bounty Hunters" in the headline of Kelly Crow's Wall Street Journal article on the same theme last Friday) has reminded me to follow up on a celebrated artworld case about which I wrote the following for the WSJ, back in 1999:
If there were habeas corpus for paintings, "Portrait of Wally" would have been released by now.
Nearly two years and three court decisions after the New York Times first reported the tangled story of the painting's convoluted journey from the collection of Viennese art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray to that of Viennese ophthalmologist Rudolf Leopold, "Wally" is still languishing under house arrest at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which had borrowed her for a 1997 exhibition.
Flash forward to 2007: "Wally" is still languishing in storage, but not at MoMA. Having been seized by the U.S. Customs Service, it is now in a warehouse run by the Department of Homeland Security. According to MoMA's deputy general counsel, Stephen Clark, "No trial date [at U.S. District Court in Manhattan] has been set."
The Times reported that New York art-restitution attorneys Lawrence Kaye and Howard Spiegler are "helping the heirs" of the Viennese dealer in their effort to recover the Schiele painting from the Leopold Museum, Vienna, which had lent it to the MoMA show. The heirs assert that it had been confiscated from Jaray by the Nazis and should be returned to the family.
Spiegler told CultureGrrl today that an effort early last year at mediation in the case had failed, but he was hopeful that the matter would be resolved in court by "the end of this year or the beginning of next."
The law's inexcusable delay means that this innocent artwork has been sentenced to indefinite confinement, providing pleasure to no one---except, perhaps, the lawyers who, along with the District Court, are holding her hostage instead of expeditiously resolving the ownership dispute.
Categories:
About
LEE SPEAKS on artworld issues, art blogging, journalism. To engage me, go here. To see me speak, go here.
CULTUREGRRL VIDEOS
KEEP CULTUREGRRL BLOGGING! Please Contribute. Donors of $5 or more receive immediate e-mail notifications of new posts. Donors of $50 or more get advance alerts. Secure transaction via PayPal:
LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I'm a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, and on arts blogging at American University.
Look at me! I'm tweeting! more
Contact me
Click here to send me an email...
moreBlogroll
About Last Night
Art History Newsletter
Art Law Blog
Art Observed
The Art Tribune (France)
Artblog.net
Articulations (Smithsonian)
Artopia
bloggers@brooklynmuseum
Design Observer
A Don's Life
Edward Lifson
Exhibitionist (Boston)
Eye Level (SAAM)
Foot in Mouth (dance)
Greg.org
LA Observed (Los Angeles)
Lindsay Pollock Art Market Views
Looting Matters
Modern Kicks
New Curator
NewYorkology--Architecture
NewYorkology--Museums
NYC Opera Fanatic
Opera Chic
Slog (Seattle)
Unframed (LACMA)
Walker
AJ Ads
AJ Blogs
AJBlogCentral | rssculture
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Richard Kessler on arts education
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Art from the American Outback
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
No genre is the new genre
David Jays on theatre and dance
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
John Rockwell on the arts
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
classical music
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
visual
Public Art, Public Space
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog

Leave a comment