Austria bows out of Klimts’ future

IN the last moments before the Los Angeles County Museum of Art unveiled its exhibition of five Gustav Klimt paintings last Tuesday, museum leaders, 90-year-old heiress Maria Altmann and attorney E. Randol Schoenberg gathered several dozen journalists in a plastic tent under pounding rain to review the paintings’ history.

It was a tangled tale, ending with Altmann prevailing over the Austrian government, but at least one audience member already knew it well: Los Angeles-based Austrian Consul General Martin Weiss, who sat among the press to listen and smile diplomatically and, should anyone ask, offer Austrian spin.

“Of course we thought we were right,” Weiss said of the seven-year legal battle for the Klimts that ended in January. Austria had argued that Altmann’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, had requested that the paintings go to Austria’s national gallery, which they did. But three months ago, an Austrian panel ruled that after Bloch-Bauer’s death in 1925, the destination of the paintings was up to her husband -- who fled the country and lost most of his possessions with the advance of the Nazis and the targeting of Jews for persecution in 1938.

The good thing about the return of the paintings, Weiss said, “is that it was decided by an Austrian arbitration panel.... Nobody [in Austria] can question that.”

Altmann, who has lived in Los Angeles for decades, agreed to the temporary exhibition that will be on view through June 30 -- the paintings’ first appearance together in the U.S. She hasn’t decided whether she’ll keep, sell or donate the works, Schoenberg said.

One buyer who won’t be stepping up: the Austrian government. Though the works have been treasured for more than 50 years as a part of Austrian cultural history, Weiss said, Austria’s leaders made “a political decision” not to attempt to buy the works, whose value has been estimated at $150 million to $300 million. He noted that his government’s museum spending amounts to about $70 million yearly.

“The decision was it would be too much,” said Weiss. “I think it’s the end of the story, and I hope the people of Los Angeles enjoy the paintings.”

-- Christopher Reynolds