Complex justice in a Nazi-looting case

Four masterpieces by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) will be auctioned next Wednesday, bringing to a climax one story of Nazi looting and a family's efforts to reclaim its heritage. The sale, however, raises complicated issues of museum responsibility, public access to important works of art, and a need to correct injustice.

The Austrian National Gallery returned the paintings in January to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy Jewish businessman whose extraordinary art collection included porcelains as well as 19th-century Austrian paintings. The four to be sold Nov. 8 at Christie's in New York could fetch more than $93 million.

A fifth painting, the portrait "Adele Bloch- Bauer I" sold earlier this year for a record $135 million to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, for his museum, the Neue Galerie in New York. As the auction nears, speculation is heating up that Mr. Lauder may try to buy at least one additional Klimt for the museum.

The family's decision to auction the paintings – instead of donating all or a portion of them to a museum – was met with disappointment in the museum community. The Austrian museum was unable to meet the price set by the family, led by Bloch-Bauer's niece, Maria Altmann, in Los Angeles. An agreement also failed to materialize with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Concerns were raised that the paintings might be bought by private collectors and disappear from public view.

"No one would say, 'This woman doesn't have the right to do what she wishes with these paintings,' because of the tragic circumstances," says James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. Cuno served on a presidential advisory panel on Holocaust assets. He considers it a loss when paintings of such caliber must leave a museum, even if for all the right reasons.

"The entire issue is about righting a historic wrong," says Sharon Flescher, executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR). "These cases are more poignant because of the emotional and ethical – as well as legal – issues involved."

"Maria Altmann is a very determined woman," says one of her lawyers, Steven Thomas, in Los Angeles, referring to Ms. Altmann's eight-year legal battle to win the paintings back. "She wanted to set all those wrongs to a right."

When the Nazis took control of Austria in 1938, Bloch-Bauer escaped from Vienna to Zurich, losing his business, homes, and art.

After the war, Austrian officials took "a very aggressive position" on retaining artwork, says E. Randol Schoenberg, the lawyer who pursued the case against the Austrian museum. The Bloch-Bauers, along with other families, had to cut deals in order to get certain art out of the country. The Austrians took advantage of this, says Mr. Schoenberg, and used Adele Bloch-Bauer's will (Ferdinand's wife, who died in 1925) as leverage for holding the Klimts.

In January 2006, Austrian arbitrators declared that the paintings had been obtained illegally, and under Austrian law, must be returned to the family.

In 1941, Bloch-Bauer wrote to Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka from Zurich: "In your position, I would have gone to America and if it is still possible, go immediately! Europe will be a heap of ruins, perhaps the whole world; for art there will be no place here for decades!... Perhaps I will get [back] the two [Klimt] portraits of my poor wife.... I should find out about that this week!... [I] will wait and find out, whether justice will still come, then I will gladly lay my hammer down."

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