It's Private Property

On August 30 of this year, I posted about the the travails of Dina Babbitt, who has been attempting to regain some art pieces she created while incarcerated in a concentration camp run by the Nazis in WWII.

In a similar vein, The Wall Street Journal today brings us the story of Maria Altmann, who, unlike Ms. Babbitt, has had restored to her possession five (5) extremely valuable Klimt paintings that had been confiscated from her family, by the Nazis.  After the war, the paintings ended up in the possession of various Austrian museums.  But, in the early part of 2006, the paintings were returned to Ms. Altmann and she has opted to market four (4) of them to the highest bidder via Christies.  The fifth has already been sold to Ronald Lauder for the sum of 135 million.

The fact that Ms. Altmann is selling the Klimt paintings has raised the ire of certain members of the art world, including the NYT’s chief art critic, Michael Kimmelman, who had this to say about the pending auction,

New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman inveighed against the sale. Ms. Altmann and her relatives, he declared, were “cashing in,” turning a “story about justice and redemption after the Holocaust” into “yet another tale of the crazy, intoxicating art market.” The family should give the works away, donating “one or more” to a public institution, or negotiate “a private sale to a museum at a price below the auction house estimates.” He even came close to stating that Ms. Altmann’s museum loans weren’t a sign of her generosity but a kind of profiteering, since “the museums provided presale publicity of a sort that no auction house could organize."

My, what breast beating from Mr. Kimmelman.  As if he has any right, what-so-ever, to set the rules for what Ms. Altmann decides to with her private property.

Mr. Kimmelman is not the only individual barking at Ms. Altmann, but that is not surprising since barking dogs tend to get other dogs barking.

The Wall Street Journal writer, Eric Gibson, gets it right, regardless of his invoking the “long-denied heirs” line, as the ending of his piece illustrates.

But there is a principle at stake bigger than cash flow, namely: Long-denied heirs like Ms. Altmann should be allowed to do as they please with their property once they have recovered it. Isn’t that, so to speak, the whole point? The “story about justice and redemption after the Holocaust,” to borrow Mr. Kimmelman’s phrase, surely includes the right of the descendants of Nazi-era victims to exercise the freedom their families were denied.

The WSJ piece is titled With Klimt Comes Condemnation

Posted by on 09/29 at 07:37 AM

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