Panel ponders legalities of reclaiming art

They are like a vast shelf of sad, unfinished stories still awaiting a redemptive ending: artworks looted by the Nazis during World War II, now being sought by aged owners who escaped or survived the Holocaust, or by a new generation of heirs who are carrying on -- or initiating -- the quest for what was lost.

But the compelling dramas of those searches often won’t play out to a conclusion without an exhausting slog through an intricate tangle of arcane and conflicting law. That was part of the message in a panel discussion Tuesday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on “Law, Justice and the Recovery of Holocaust Art.”

Still, the four legal experts said, the increasing availability of databases and newly unveiled records in the former Soviet bloc are propelling more searches.

Though sometimes abstruse, the discussion also was fired by the allure of great art -- disputed paintings by Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Gustave Courbet were projected at times behind the Bing Theater dais -- and by the unceasing fascination of horrific history. There, on the screen, was Adolf Hitler, taking one of his weekly browses through a Parisian storehouse of looted canvases.

But the heart of the matter for the four lawyers -- E. Randol Schoenberg, Simon J. Frankel, Steven E. Thomas and Thaddeus J. Stauber -- was an analysis of the legal chutes and ladders that face people trying to claim art lost in the Holocaust.

For example: Can the seeker of lost art fight for it on U.S. legal turf, where stolen goods are stolen goods and must be returned to the rightful owners even if innocently acquired many years after the original theft?

Or will European law come into play, where owners of looted art works may need only prove that they were acquired in good faith, their Nazi past unknown?

Thomas emphasized that the growing wealth of information that is helping victims of Nazi art theft trace their losses also is available to those who have doubts about the legitimacy of what they own -- and that there are moral and legal reasons to end any uncertainty.

The number of claims today “is probably in the hundreds. You’ll see more and more,” he said after the discussion, sponsored by the Beverly Hills Bar Assn.’s Committee for the Arts. Most of those are being settled without going to court, Thomas said.

He thinks private collectors would be well advised to follow what U.S. museums have done since 1998, researching ownership histories to make sure looting is not an issue.

Stauber, a former LACMA counsel who has represented museums in looting-related cases, says he knows of 15 claims brought against U.S. museums. The museums’ policy, he says, is to restore works to rightful owners when proof of a Nazi past becomes clear.

Schoenberg said in an interview that he has handled more than a dozen claims since 1998, when he embarked on the first of two high-profile cases, both still unresolved, involving six Klimt paintings held by a government-owned museum in Austria and a Picasso hanging in the apartment of a Chicago philanthropist.

“These million-dollar paintings are the only ones that make it worth the effort, that make it economical to spend years searching, digging up documents and in some cases litigating,” he said. “But sometimes you find a lesser painting and the [owners] are more willing to give it up.”

But, as Frankel told the audience of about 100, what’s most involving are the historical stakes and the family stories.

“In a lot of respects the law is not that interesting in these cases,” he said.

“For me, what’s compelling are the very moving and often tragic facts.”