But Agnes Peresztegi, the president and legal counsel of the Commission on Art Recovery — an organization founded by the billionaire art collector Ronald S. Lauder to encourage the restitution of artworks stolen during World War II — said in an interview that she agreed with Mr. Dowd. The “Bakalar” case was not decided on the merits, she said, but on the technical issue that too much time had passed to pursue a claim. She said she welcomes the use of the new law in deciding whether many of the Grunbaum collection’s Schieles, including the two owned by Mr. Nagy, were stolen.
In 2015 Mr. Bakalar, who paid $4,300 for the work, sold it at auction for $1.3 million.
The law created a federal statute of limitations for such claims: six years from the time of “actual discovery” of the art’s whereabouts. It is in line with the spirit of two international proclamations stating that technicalities should not be employed to prevent stolen property from being returned to rightful owners. The legislation has also been cited by lawyers for the estate of Alice Leffman, in a federal suit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seeking restitution of a valuable Picasso painting, “The Actor.” In court filings, the museum has asked that the case be dismissed, and has stated that it does not believe that the Picasso was stolen.
Vavra, previously pursued the restitution of another Schiele drawing from the Grunbaum collection, “Seated Woman With Bent Left Leg (Torso) .” In that litigation, filed in 2005, the court ruled in favor of a Boston businessman, David Bakalar, who had bought the work in 1963. It said too much time had passed since the Grunbaum heirs had made their claim, causing evidence to be lost. Mr. Dowd appealed the ruling, but lost.
In 2012, Baum sued Gagosian on behalf of nonagenarian Jan Cowles for the “unlawful” sale of Roy Lichtenstein’s painting Girl In Mirror (1964). The case was settled for an undisclosed amount, but not before revealing crucial information about how the exceedingly-private Gagosian does business.
More recently, Cahill represented John Howard and Martin and Sharleen Cohen in their lawsuits against Ann Freedman, Michael Hammer, Glafira Rosales and the Knoedler Gallery; their case was settled three days after Domenico DeSole settled his own suit against the same defendants. 3. Gregory A. Clarick.
His firm, John Silberman Associates PC, was founded in 1996. It specializes in contracts, corporate matters, copyright, intellectual property, tax and estate planning (including wills and trusts), estate administration, and non-profit organizations law.
Thomas and Charles Danziger. Courtesy of photographer Kate Simon. 4. Thomas C. Danziger and Charles T. Danziger. The two brothers are founding partners of Danziger, Danziger & Muro, LLP, where they specialize in art, luxury brands, and high-end restaurant groups.
Before his lengthy tenure at Sotheby’s, Ol soff worked at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, a major corporate law firm, where he represented David Wojnarowicz in his successful 1989 suit against the Reverend Donald Wildmon and the American Family Foundation (Olsoff is the brother of P.P.O.W. gallery’s Wendy Olsoff). More recently, Olsoff went on the record to protect the right of auction houses to keep the names of sellers in a transaction anonymous. Asked about a 2013 appeals court ruling that appears to mandate auction houses end their practice of keeping sellerss names a secret, Olsoff said he found the decision “narrow and technical.”
In a related case, Baum settled for the elderly Cowles against Gagosian for $4.4 million after it was revealed that Charles had also sold The Innocent Eye Test (1981) by Mark Tansey through the gallery—despite the fact that the painting was promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it presently hangs.
In February, the feuding parties reached a temporary agreement: The bust was subsequently delivered to Gagosian by MoMA —where it had been recently included in the “Picasso Sculpture” exhibition—pending a settlement of the dispute. Robert Lowinger, Renee Vara, John Cahill at Phillips Auction House.
Christy Haubegger, a talent executive, is a Stanford Law School graduate who founded Latina magazine in 1996 after she became frustrated that she couldn’t find a glossy lifestyle publication for women who looked like her. She became a movie producer, and then an agent at CAA, for a similar reason: “to be able to control the narrative.” She says she considers guiding the entertainment industry into the 21st century as something like her life’s work—“and it was my life’s work 20 years ago.”
When she started at CAA in 2003, talent agent Haubegger says, “Most of the interns were people who had conspicuously important last names.”. Similarly, the demographic breakdown of the agency’s client list “looked a lot like the agents.”.
Four days before the 2018 Academy Awards, at an intersection a few blocks away from the Dolby Theatre, a different type of gold statue appeared: a life-size Harvey Weinstein. Titled Casting Couch, it depicted a seated, bare-chested Weinstein, one hand hovering ominously over the belt of his robe. Whether he was in the act of closing or opening it depended on how you felt about Hollywood. In the five months since Weinstein was brought down by the testimonies of his victims in The New York Times and The New Yorker, Casting Couch was a well-timed reminder ahead of the industry’s biggest night that the producer was once its golden god—before it finally tossed him out.
Talitha Watkins, talent agent, was hired by CAA two years ago, in part as a “multicultural expert” to promote a diverse client list. (In August 2017, The Hollywood Reporter noted that 44 percent of the agency’s motion picture department was female and 22 percent was people of color; the TV department was 46 percent female and 18 percent “diverse.”) “It’s very refreshing,” she says, for conversations she has long been having “to be a part of the zeitgeist, and everyone’s conversation.” But she also remembers, “as a kid of ’90s movies,” that there have been other times in which “diverse storytelling” felt like it was going to last—and didn’t. It’s something she keeps in mind when she considers the current momentum behind #MeToo, and the importance of actual strategic changes in the industry. “We felt that that moment was going to last forever,” she said of the last heyday for black filmmakers and directors, “and then a lot of the people who were making those pictures weren’t able to go on and do more studio movies.”
For Risa Gertner, the cohead of the motion picture literary department and member of the senior leadership team at CAA, “Nurturing the careers of women in the department has been a priority.” She is also working with the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace cocreated in December 2017 by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and chaired by Anita Hill. Says Gertner: “We have made a concerted effort to create opportunities for strong female voices, whether it’s by helping to change the landscape of the movies being made, championing female directors for studio films, or signing the next wave of female filmmakers.”
Rowena Arguelles is a motion picture literary agent , and as The Hollywood Reporter pointed out in its “2017 Women in Entertainment Power 100” issue, she is the only agent in Hollywood—man or woman—to represent not one but two directors (Patty Jenkins and Taika Waititi) of 2017’s 10 highest-grossing films.”.
Tracy Brennan, motion picture talent agent , is encouraged by the outpouring of support for the Time’s Up movement. Says Brennan: “It is exciting to think that women in a range of professions—from waitresses, to farmworkers, to athletes—can fight for equal pay and a safe work environment without fear of retaliation.”
The museum's U.S. attorney, Thaddeus Stauber, told The Associated Press the legal fight is likely at an end now. "The court conducted, and we conducted, what the appellate court asked us to, which was a full trial on the merits," he said. "We now have a decision on the lawful owner and that should put an end to it.".
The museum also pointed out that the Cassirer family did receive financial compensation from the German government in the 1950s for the estimated market value of the artwork — about $13,000.
The family traded the painting for freedom. Lilly Cassirer was never able to access the money, which was in a blocked account. She spent years trying to find the painting before she died in 1962.
In other words, if a thief steals a painting, an unwitting buyer can never legally possess it if the original owner comes calling.
Under Spanish law, a museum or collector can keep artwork it purchased without realizing it was stolen, the BBC reports. The Kingdom of Spain, which owns the museum, did recognize there was a risk that "a small number of paintings could have a title issue," the judge wrote.
The painting passed through so many hands between the Nazis and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the judge said, that there's no way the museum could have known it was stolen — nor any reason to be suspect of its lineage. Enlarge this image.