Department of Strange Lawsuits: Monteleone Chariot; MoMA and Guggenheim Picassos

Ownership claims have made strange adversaries in Italy; unusual allies in New York.

In Italy, the village of Monteleone just won't give up on its claim for the Etruscan chariot that the Metropolitan Museum has owned for over 100 years. Miffed that the Italian Culture Ministry hasn't taken up its cause, the village, by unanimous vote of its council, has decided to sue not only the current minister, Francesco Rutelli, but also his two immediate predecessors, for "not doing enough to get the artifact back," according a report by ANSA, the Italian news agency.

But here's the ANSA article's kicker:

Italy still has a few more requests pending with the [Metropolitan] museum---but the chariot is not yet one of these.

Are these really "pending requests," or just the give-backs already agreed to, which are scheduled to take place in the future?

Meanwhile in the U.S., the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry, who has previously been outspokenly critical of the Guggenheim Foundation's director, Tom Krens, has now teamed up with his New York colleague to initiate a joint legal action to get the U.S. District Court to issue "a declaration confirming their ownership of two renowned works by Pablo Picasso---'Boy Leading a Horse,' 1906, in MoMA's collection and 'Le Moulin de la Galette,' 1900, in the Guggenheim's collection. This action is in response to a claim by Julius H. Schoeps, a private citizen of Germany."

The museums' joint statement further states:

The museums have taken this step in view of Mr. Schoeps's recent history of litigation regarding a work of art with the same provenance as those in MoMA's and the Guggenheim's collections, and his clear indication that he intended to pursue legal action against them. Today's filing asks the court to affirm the museums' ownership of the works based on the extensive factual information that exists on their provenance....Evidence from our extensive research makes clear the museums' ownership of these works and also makes clear that Mr. Schoeps has no basis for his claim.

According to the museums, Schoeps demanded the paintings from them on Nov. 1, "alleging that because the [Paul] von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family was of Jewish descent and the Nazis rose to power in 1933, there is a presumption that the sales of the paintings to [dealer Justin K.] Thannhauser were made under duress."

Similar legal action to affirm ownership is being initiated in England by Andrew Lloyd Webber, whose Picasso, "Angel Fernández de Soto," has also been sought by the same claimant. NY Supreme Court Judge Rolando Acosta recently decided, on technical grounds, against Schoeps' Nazi-loot claim for Lloyd Webber's painting.

Now that they've started collaborating, maybe Lowry and Krens can work together on something really interesting---a joint exhibition, perhaps?