An effort in Congress to extend a 2016 law meant to help Holocaust victims and their heirs retrieve artworks stolen by the Nazis is pitting Jewish organizations that want to strengthen the law against major museums that have been quietly lobbying to keep it as it is.
The law, which is set to expire at the end of next year if it is not renewed, was intended to loosen the statute of limitations to help people recover art that was looted or sold under duress more than 80 years ago. It gave people a new window of up to six years to file lawsuits from the time they discover the location of the artwork and can show their right to it.
The law has been used successfully in some high-profile cases, including to recover valuable works by Egon Schiele. But in some cases, courts have ruled that the passage of so many decades had unfairly hindered the ability of the current owners of disputed artworks, including major museums, to mount effective defenses.
A bipartisan bill in the Senate aims to strengthen it by explicitly barring defenses based on the passage of time. “The intent of this act is to permit claims to recover Nazi-looted art to be brought, notwithstanding the passage of time since World War II,” states the new bill, whose sponsors include Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican, and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat.
Those changes have drawn the support of a number of prominent Jewish organizations, which say that they are necessary to make sure that people with valid claims to confiscated artworks are not prevented from recovering them just because so much time has passed.
“Hundreds of thousands of pieces of artwork were taken from the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and survivors in the United States should not be unfairly barred from claiming artwork that is theirs,” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a Republican, said in a statement.
But museums are lobbying against the changes, which would extend the law indefinitely and limit their ability to mount certain defenses in cases where they dispute claims.
The Association of American Museum Directors has paid $8,000 to lobby elected representatives on the issue, disclosure filings show.
The association supports a five-year extension of the law “in the form that was originally passed in 2016,” said Sascha Freudenheim, a spokesman for the group. “The association’s position is that a five-year extension carries forward the benefits of the current law, while also allowing both claimants and museums the ability to evaluate the act’s effectiveness within a reasonable time frame.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has expressed concern about the proposed bill, according to two congressional aides who attended meetings where those concerns were raised. The museum also had a lobbyist meet with lawmakers and request they continue to allow time-barred defenses and include an expiration date on the legislation.
Ann Bailis, a spokeswoman for the Met, said that “before the legislation was released in the House, the Met participated in discussions with its congressional representatives about various changes being considered for the bill.”
“The Met has long been a leader in the field of Nazi-era provenance research,” she said in a statement, “and has a well-documented history of seeking resolution for works that were lost in the Holocaust.”
The law, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, is known as the HEAR Act. It was used successfully in 2018 when the heirs of Fritz Grunbaum, an Austrian Jewish cabaret performer who died in 1941 at the Dachau concentration camp, used it to reclaim two Schiele drawings. “The HEAR Act compels us to help return Nazi-looted art to its heirs,” Judge Charles J. Ramos wrote in his ruling, in which he also noted “the gut-wrenching process by which Mr. Grunbaum’s property was looted.”
But other courts have limited the power of the act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in 2019 that while the law allowed people to file claims that otherwise would have been barred by statutes of limitations, it still allowed defendants to argue in some cases that the passage of time had hindered their ability to mount an effective defense.
That ruling came in response to a lawsuit that Laurel Zuckerman, the great-grandniece of a German Jewish businessman, had filed against the Metropolitan Museum of Art seeking the return one of its prize Picassos, “The Actor.”
A lower court ruled that the heirs of the businessman, Paul Leffmann, had failed to state a claim that he had been forced to sell the painting under duress while in Italy after fleeing the Nazis. The Second Circuit appeals court upheld the ruling on different grounds: the court found that the delay in bringing the lawsuit had been unreasonable, given that the painting had been in the Met’s possession since 1952. It added that “we conclude that the Met has been prejudiced by the more than six decades that have elapsed since the end of World War II.”
Some lawmakers who worked to pass the HEAR Act said that such rulings had undermined the spirit of the legislation. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said that the stronger version they are now seeking to pass “clarifies Congress’s commitment to ensuring these cases are determined on the merits alone, and that no family with a valid Holocaust art restitution claim is denied their day in court due to procedural technicalities.”
Marie-Christine Sungaila, a lawyer who represented Zuckerman in her claim against the Met Museum, said the proposed changes to the HEAR Act would benefit Holocaust victims and their families. “This amendment should not be necessary, but it has become necessary because of the arguments that museums like the Met have made in court,” she said.
Some advocates for Holocaust victims said the museum industry was lagging in its commitment to returning looted objects. “We think that the approach to addressing this issue has to take into account the historical reality,” said Gideon Taylor, president of the World Jewish Restitution Organization, which has lobbied in favor of the law.” This is not the case of normal theft or robbery. This was in the context of the Holocaust.”
Leila Amineddeloh, an attorney specializing in cultural heritage law and stolen art cases, said that museums are likely concerned that eliminating time-barred defenses could open cultural institutions up to an onslaught of lawsuits based on events that took place decades ago. “Museums already running on limited resources would have to respond to all these claims,” she said.
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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