Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California allegedly possess two artworks looted by the Nazis which descendants of their original Jewish owner now want returned.
The museums face two lawsuits filed last week by Timothy Reif, a judge on the United States Court of International Trade. Reif is an heir of Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret singer murdered by Nazis at Dachau in 1941. Grünbaum is Reif’s paternal grandfather’s first cousin.
In the suits, Reif and another heir, David Fraenkel, are acting to reclaim a pencil on paper drawing called Portrait of the Artist’s Wife by Egon Schiele, which the suit says is located in the Santa Barbara museum, and the painting Prostitute, also by Egon Schiele, which the other suit says is located in the Museum of Modern Art.