DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ Who Owns a Drawing That May Be Nazi Loot? A Judge Will Decide.
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-09 | by ( Colin Moynihan | Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 1964, Robert Owen Lehman Sr., a philanthropist and art collector who led the Lehman Brothers investment firm through the Great Depression, bought a small drawing by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. A few weeks later, his son Robert Owen Lehman Jr. says, he received the drawing, a portrait of a rosy cheeked woman with a soft smile, from his father as a holiday gift. The collectors, Karl Mayländer and Heinrich Rieger, were associates of Schiele in Austria, and their heirs have each claimed ownership of “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife,” a depiction of Edith Schiele. Mayländer was a textile merchant who is depicted in at least two Schiele portraits. Both men were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Persons: Robert Owen Lehman Sr, Egon Schiele, Robert Owen Lehman Jr, Karl Mayländer, Heinrich Rieger, Edith Schiele, Mayländer, Rieger Organizations: Lehman, Schiele Locations: Austrian, Austria

☆ Getty Museum Agrees to Return Ancient Bronze Head to Turkey
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles on Wednesday said it was returning an ancient bronze head to Turkey that it had purchased in 1971 from an antiquities dealer who sold other items to museums that were later found to have been looted. The museum said the decision was made “in light of new information” provided by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which asserts that the object was stolen in the 1960s from a heavily plundered Roman-era settlement in Turkey known as Bubon. Neither the museum nor investigators would describe the new information, but the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has in recent years been investigating the looting of artifacts from Bubon and has pursued the return of a number of bronze objects that were held by American museums or private collectors. In one case, investigators seized a statue of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in another, a statue of the emperor Lucius Verus from the home of a philanthropist and Met trustee, Shelby White.

Persons: Septimius Severus, Lucius Verus, Shelby White Organizations: Paul Getty Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art Locations: Los Angeles, Turkey, Manhattan

☆ Chicago Museum Says Investigators Have No Evidence Art Was Looted
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Graham Bowley | Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Art Institute of Chicago has rebuffed an attempt by New York investigators to seize an Egon Schiele drawing in its collection, asserting in a strongly-worded 132-page court filing that the investigators have produced no evidence that the artwork was looted by the Nazis as they claim. The drawing, “Russian War Prisoner,” was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966. It is one of a number of works by Schiele that ended up in the hands of museums and collectors and have been sought by the heirs of the collector Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1941. In a court filing in February, the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused the museum of ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been stolen by the Nazis on the eve of World War II. But the museum in its filing on Tuesday argued that the drawing had legitimately passed from Grünbaum to his sister-in-law, who had sold it to a Swiss dealer after the war in 1956.

Persons: Egon Schiele, ”, Schiele, Fritz Grünbaum Organizations: Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute Locations: New York, Vienna, Manhattan, Grünbaum, Swiss

The story of the Bubon bronzes, though, is more than just a tale of looters’ remorse, investigative zeal, art market intrigue and antiquities repatriation. It’s also a lesson in history, one that presents a more nuanced view of ancient Rome than that popularized by Hollywood epics. Rome allowed a measure of self-government and promoted the promise of citizenship as potent tools to keep the peace. And there was often local buy-in, evident in the shrines built by invaded peoples to show respect for their conquerors. The Bubon bronzes, instead, remained underground, intact, for almost 2,000 years.

Persons: It’s, Severus, Trajan, Augustus, Roman Organizations: Hollywood Locations: Rome, Libya, Spain, Bubon, Asia

☆ Schiele Works Believed to Be Stolen Are Seized From U.S. Museums
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Whether you are a plaintiff, prosecutor or defense counsel, attorneys are always looking for new precedents,” Mark Vlasic, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University and former United Nations war crimes prosecutor, said in an email. The art will be transported to New York at a later date. In a statement, the Art Institute said: “We are confident in our legal acquisition and lawful possession of this work. Before Wednesday’s actions, the Grünbaum heirs had filed civil claims not just against the three museums, but also against the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library and Museum, both in New York City; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California; and several individual defendants. The plaintiffs in this case had filed claims seeking the return of other Schiele works at other museums.

Persons: ” Mark Vlasic, ” Organizations: Georgetown University, United, Art Institute, Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie, Oberlin, Museum of Modern Art, Morgan Library and Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art Locations: United Nations, Oberlin, New York, New York City, California

☆ Investigators Seize ‘Marcus Aurelius’ Statue From Cleveland Museum
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With its flowing robes and stoic posture, the larger-than-life bronze statue believed to represent the great Roman statesman Marcus Aurelius had, since 1986, held pride of place in the Greek and Roman galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Now the statue is off display, seized under a warrant earlier this month by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The office said on Thursday that the seizure was related to an “ongoing criminal investigation into a smuggling network involving antiquities looted from Turkey and trafficked through Manhattan.”In their warrant, investigators put the value of the statue, which is headless, at $20 million, and said it was about 1,800 years old. They said it would be transported to New York in September. According to the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, the accused traffickers were based in New York, giving the unit legal authority to seize the statue from another state because New York was the “focal point of the conspiracy.” Officials would not elaborate on the case.

Persons: Marcus Aurelius Organizations: Cleveland Museum of Art, ”, Trafficking Locations: Manhattan, Turkey, New York

In 2006 she gave $200 million to New York University to help create the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, which operates in a townhouse her foundation bought near the Met. White and Levy had begun amassing their extensive collection of more than 700 antiquities in the 1970s. Beginning in 1993, the couple agreed to relinquish 16 items after claims they had been looted from an ancient Roman site in England. In 2008, White surrendered 10 objects to Italy and two to Greece. It had been part of the “Glories of the Past” exhibition at the Met in 1990.

Persons: White, Levy, Giacomo Medici, Robin Symes, Eucharides, “, ”, David Gill Organizations: Brooklyn Museum, New, Botanical, Lincoln Center, New York University, for, Carnegie, Met, Centre for Heritage, University of Kent Locations: England, Italy, Greece, Italian, British, Turkey

☆ The Kylix Marvel: Why Experts Distrust the Story of an Ancient Cup’s Rebirth
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Graham Bowley | Tom Mashberg | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Dietrich turned what was a bunch of fragments into something that was beautiful,” said Hemingway, the Met curator. It is not clear how the dozens of fragments that were used to reconstruct the kylix came to be so widely dispersed. And all of them had some kind of relationship with von Bothmer. Fritz Bürki, who sold the Met the first fragments in 1978, was an expert in the reassembly of fractured artifacts. He had rebuilt the infamous Euphronios krater for Hecht, the dealer who sold it to von Bothmer and the Met.

Search resuls for: "Tom Mashberg"

8 mentions found