Art Law: Boston Museum of Fine Arts: Sues Heirs of Jews To Keep Stolen Property, Hides Evidence



Two Nudes (Lovers)

1913

Kokoschka, Oskar, Austrian, 1886–1980

163.2 x 97.5 cm (64 1/4 x 38 3/8 in.)

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Apparently there is some confusion about the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Victoria Reed's role in laundering Nazi-looted art by getting a federal court to shield the MFA from discovery into its provenance research. 
 
Let's make it clear:  just because a federal judge says heirs have no legal rights to obtain the return of property because the claims are time-barred, doesn't mean property wasn't stolen.   To unpack that double-negative, if a judge says heirs can't find out and prove that a painting was stolen because their claims are time-barred, the museum is granted a windfall: a potentially-stolen artwork that no one can reclaim.
 
By pulling this scam, the MFA violates the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi Confiscated Art
 
So the MFA bringing a "declaration of title" action is completely stupid, immoral and unethical because it just means that the MFA has potentially stolen art in its collection that heirs cannot retrieve.   Not to mention, an enormous expenditure of resources on legal fees.
 
The end result is that the children of Boston can gawk at a work stolen from a Jew and never know the truth.  And the MFA wants to keep it that way.  Nice Brahmin values.
 
From the First Circuit's opinion:
 
Because she did not make a demand on the MFA until March 12, 2007, more than three years after her causes of action accrued, summary judgment was properly granted on the MFA's limitations defense.


So the Museum of Fine Arts avoided discovery and inquiry into whether the object was stolen by invoking a statute of limitations defense.   But the statute of limitations merely affects the REMEDY.  It does not give the MFA title, since under the common law, no one can ever take good title from a thief.
So the First Circuit's decision simply means that the MFA can thumb its nose at Holocaust victims and try to rewrite the history of Vienna in February 1939 to pretend that the Kokoschka was not stolen from Reichel.

This is a use of the law in the service of an evil purpose, it is unethical, immoral and it violates the charitable charter of the MFA, an entity that is subsidized by taxpayer largesse.

To clarify: here's an excerpt from the First Circuit opinion, decide for yourself whether the MFA has laundered this piece of stolen art, keeping in mind that Adolph Eichmann had the property of Vienna's Jews in his grasp in February 1939.
 
Note that the First Circuit, by inserting the entirely irrelevant fact that Otto Kallir, the alleged "purchaser" from Reichel was Jewish, tries to make the transaction innocuous.  However, many historians have documented the fact that the Nazis used a network of Jewish art dealers to launder the proceeds of stolen art:
 
 

Egon Schiele:  Portrait of Dr. Oskar Reichel



Conditions for Dr. Reichel and other Austrian Jews rapidly deteriorated following the Anschluss -- the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich in March 1938. Pursuant to Nazi regulations, Dr. Reichel was forced to file a declaration in June 1938 listing all of the valuable property he owned. One expert witness described the declaration as a "prelude to the formal Nazi confiscation and seizure of all Jewish-owned property in Austria and Germany." Proceeds from the sale of declared property had to be deposited into a Nazi-controlled account and could be withdrawn only in limited amounts. In his 1938 property declaration, Dr. Reichel stated that he owned the Painting and four other Kokoschka works. He declared the combined value of the Painting and another work to be 250 Reichsmark.

Egon Schiele- Portrait of Dr. Oskar Reichel - Head

Around the same time, Kallir, who was also Jewish, transferred ownership of his gallery to his non-Jewish secretary and moved to Paris. While Kallir was in Paris, Dr. Reichel agreed to transfer his remaining five Kokoschka works, including the Painting, to Kallir. The details of this transaction are sketchy. It is not clear whether Dr. Reichel received any consideration for the works at the time. Two contemporaneous notes indicate that Kallir agreed to purchase the five paintings for a total of 800 Swiss francs. However, Dr. Reichel's son Raimund later said that his father arranged for Kallir to send the proceeds of the transaction to another son, Hans, who had already immigrated to the United States. According to Raimund, Kallir sent Hans $250 for the five paintings in 1940 or 1941, and Hans forwarded half that sum to Raimund. The five Kokoschkas, including the Painting, were transferred from Dr. Reichel to a shipping company in Vienna, then exported to Paris.
Dr. Reichel and his wife Malvine suffered at the hands of the Nazis. They were forced to close the business Dr. Reichel had founded and to give up their family home and another property. Their eldest son was deported to Lodz, Poland, where he was killed. Malvine was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, and Dr. Reichel died of natural causes that same year. The two younger sons had emigrated by that time -- Hans to the United States and Raimund to Argentina. Malvine survived the war and eventually joined Hans in the United States.

Meanwhile, Kallir had settled in New York, where he opened the Galerie St. Etienne. He brought the Painting with him and sold it to the Nierendorf Gallery for $1,500 in 1945. The Nierendorf Gallery then sold the Painting to the E.A. Silberman Galleries, which in turn sold the Painting to Sarah Reed Blodgett in 1947 or 1948. Blodgett kept the painting for many years, lending it out for exhibitions from time to time. She eventually bequeathed the Painting to the MFA, which acquired possession in 1973.*fn4 The Painting has been on almost continuous display at the MFA since then, though it has been loaned out many times for exhibitions in the United States and around the world.
Raimund moved back to Vienna in 1982. He executed a will in 1989, in which he designated Seger-Thomschitz as his sole heir. It is not clear how Raimund and Seger-Thomschitz knew each other. She is described in one document as his "select-niece," but they are not blood relatives. When Raimund died in 1997, Seger-Thomschitz became the sole surviving heir of Dr. Reichel.*fn5
Seger-Thomschitz says that she "first learned that the Nazis confiscated artworks from Oskar Reichel in the Fall of 2003 when the Museums of Vienna contacted her concerning their intent to return to her as the sole heir of Oskar Reichel four artworks in their collection by the artist Anton Romako . . . ." The restitution of the Romako works was pursuant to a municipal resolution that Vienna had passed in 1999, which in turn implemented a 1998 national art restitution law. One municipal document notes that "it seemed quite proper" to return the works to Seger-Thomschitz because Dr. Reichel "had to sell [them] due to his persecution as a Jew." Notably, Dr. Reichel appears to have sold the Romako works around the same time that he sold the Painting, and under similar circumstances. He sold three of the four Romakos to the Neue Gallery in 1939 "for only small equivalent amounts," and he sold the fourth to the Neue Gallery in 1942. The gallery, by then under the direction of Otto Kallir's former secretary, subsequently sold the Romakos to the city.
Following her correspondence with the Museums of Vienna, Seger-Thomschitz retained a Viennese attorney, Erich Unterer -- who had also been Raimund Reichel's attorney -- "for purposes of handling the restitution of any artworks that Oskar Reichel may have lost due to Nazi persecution." Seger-Thomschitz and Unterer initially thought that all of the artwork Dr. Reichel lost during the Nazi era had been returned. In 2006, however, an American attorney "began a colloquy" with Seger-Thomschitz and alerted her to the possibility that other works formerly owned by Dr. Reichel might be located outside Austria. Seger-Thomschitz retained the attorney, whose firm then sent a letter to the MFA on March 12, 2007, demanding the return of the Painting.


When confronted with Seger-Thomschitz's claim to the Painting, the MFA undertook "an exhaustive effort to research and document the provenance of the Painting in order to ascertain whether the claim . . . appeared valid or not." An MFA curator and an independent provenance researcher spent eighteen months researching the Painting's history, during which time they visited approximately ten museums and governmental archives around the world and corresponded with numerous other museums and archives. Based on that research, the MFA concluded that the original transfer of the Painting from Dr. Reichel to Kallir was valid and that it would retain the Painting in its collection. It commenced an action against Seger-Thomschitz in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on January 22, 2008, seeking a declaratory judgment to "confirm its rightful ownership of the painting." Seger-Thomschitz answered the complaint in May of that same year and asserted counterclaims for conversion, replevin, and other state law causes of action.

As reported by ArtInfo here:

The MFA declined to allow Victoria Reed, the museum's curatorial research fellow for provenance who conducted the nine-month study of the history of the Kokoschka painting, to comment. It also would not release detailed materials from her report, saying, "The results of the museum's research are clearly outlined in its legal filing, which is publicly available and was shared with the Boston Globe."
###

What museum conducts eighteen months of research into a provenance that allegedly clears its title and then HIDES THE EVIDENCE?  

More on MFA's misdeeds here.
Not content to remain under her rock, Reed seems now to crave media attention for her occult activities.  A creepy puff piece where Reed brags of her furtive investigations and unpublished research here.   The writer refers to the MFA's payment (in lieu of returning the stolen work) as "rare preemptive compensation".

That's double-talk.  When the Austrians did it to Jews post-WWII to keep valuable pieces in Austrian museums, we have rightly deemed it extortion.

When the MFA does it, it is called "rare preemptive compensation".
More on Oskar Reichel here.

 http://www.dunnington.com/rdowd_bio.html
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Art Litigation: Nazi-Era Art Restitution - Westfied Scandal Unleashed By Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Eyeglasses from Jews murdered at Auschwitz courtesy Wikimedia Commons

As I posted yesterday, the Sixth Circuit decided to cloak Nazi actions in sovereign immunity in Westfield v. Federal Republic of Germany, my post of the decision here.   Walter Westfield was a successful Geman art dealer who was expropriated by the Nazis and murdered at Auschwitz.

In my post expressed my surprise that the Sixth Circuit did not recognize that U.S. courts were relieved of any restraints on their jurisdiction to unwind evil Nazi acts since the Second Circuit stripped the Nazis of sovereign immunity as of 1954 in the Bernstein v. N.V. Nederlansche-Americaansche case.

Additionally, the Sixth Circuit's decision in Westfield v Federal Republic of Germany seems to violate the Nuremberg Principles:

(lifted from Wikipedia)

Principle I "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment."

Principle II  "The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law."
Principle III "The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law."
Principle IV "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him".
This principle could be paraphrased as follows: "It is not an acceptable excuse to say 'I was just following my superior's orders'".
Previous to the time of the Nuremberg Trials, this excuse was known in common parlance as "Superior Orders". After the prominent, high profile event of the Nuremberg Trials, that excuse is now referred to by many as "Nuremberg Defense". In recent times, a third term, "Lawful orders" has become common parlance for some people. All three terms are in use today, and they all have slightly different nuances of meaning, depending on the context in which they are used.
Nuremberg Principle IV is legally supported by the jurisprudence found in certain articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which deal indirectly with conscientious objection. It is also supported by the principles found in paragraph 171 of the Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status which was issued by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Those principles deal with the conditions under which conscientious objectors can apply for refugee status in another country if they face persecution in their own country for refusing to participate in an illegal war.
See also: Nuremberg Defense, Superior Orders, and Lawful orders
Principle V "Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law."
Principle VI "The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes:Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime."
Principle VII "Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law."

Article explaining that the Westfields escaped Nazi Germany as refugees in 1940 while Walter Westfield, the famous art dealer was murdered at Auschwitz  here

More details from Bloomberg on the Westfield case here

Washington Post on the Westfield case here 

Fred Westfield's lawsuit was supposed to have been touched off by an inquiry from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.   I can't find any information about the Westfield work on the MFA's website.

According to its website (excerpt below), the MFA Boston can't figure out where approximately 50% of its artworks come from that fit into the class of works that could have been looted by the Nazis.   MFA has compiled a "priority list" and claims it is researching its collection, but it appears to keep the research secret and inaccessable.

To avoid scrutiny into the provenance of one painting, MFA sued heirs of Holocaust victims recently over Kokoschka's Two Nudes - Lovers.  More information on that case here   The First Circuit's decision in Museum of Fine Arts, Boston v. Seger Thomschitz here.   Unfortunately, the MFA won the case on statute of limitations grounds, ensuring that an artwork which appears to have been taken from the Viennese Jew Oskar Reichel under the Nazis and given to a dealer with Nazi connections in February 1939 will remain in the MFA's hands.   To my knowledge, the MFA has not published its provenance research on the Kokoschka, but simply puts propagandistic conclusory language on its website, such as:

 "In February 1939, Reichel transferred ownership of five Kokoschka paintings—including Two Nudes (Lovers) —to Kallir, who exhibited them in his Paris gallery that spring."

More such unverifiable propaganda here    This passive language is what we lawyers call "conclusory".  When people use such language, we usually demand FACTS from which we may draw accurate conclusions.    How did this "ownership transfer" occur?   I would like to know more.

The First Circuit's decision tells us enough to conclude that the Kokoschka was stolen from Reichel:

Pursuant to Nazi regulations, Dr. Reichel was forced to file a declaration in June 1938 listing all of the valuable property he owned. One expert witness described the declaration as a "prelude to the formal Nazi confiscation and seizure of all Jewish-owned property in Austria and Germany." Proceeds from the sale of declared property had to be deposited into a Nazi-controlled account and could be withdrawn only in limited amounts. In his 1938 property declaration, Dr. Reichel stated that he owned the Painting and four other Kokoschka works. He declared the combined value of the Painting and another work to be 250 Reichsmark.

[....] While Kallir was in Paris, Dr. Reichel agreed to transfer his remaining five Kokoschka works, including the Painting, to Kallir. The details of this transaction are sketchy. It is not clear whether Dr. Reichel received any consideration for the works at the time.

How did Oskar Reichel "transfer ownership" when his assets are completely blocked by the Nazis, he did't get paid, and the Nazis have a gun to his head and have already put his assets in their 1939 war budget?

We all know that Adolph Eichmann arrived in Vienna in the summer of 1938 and set up his infamous "conveyor belt" at the Zentralstelle - a Jew arrived and left with a passport completely despoiled of property.  The April 26, 1938 law forbid Jews with more than 5,000 RM in property from making transfers of declared property without Nazi permission.  In November 1938, the Reich's beancounters at the Finance Ministry already had ALL declared Jewish property in their budget.  Even the New York Times is starting to finally report on the Reich Finance Ministry's activities, see this December 2010 article claiming that 30% of the Wehrmacht was financed by confiscated Jewish assets.   In December 1938 following Kristallnacht, Aryan trustees were appointed to act as guardians of the property for Jews and put in charge of liquidating Jewish property for the Reich.

Oskar Reichel could not have "transferred ownership" to a Kokoschka in February 1939 as a matter of law.

So the MFA's website consists of pure fiction and Holocaust denial, as far as I can tell.   But just ask Malcolm Rogers. 

Malcolm Rogers - Waving the Baton for 50% Ignorance of Provenance European Paintings and Sculptures at MFA Boston

Rather than referring to the European artworks potentially looted by Nazis as "potentially stolen from murdered Jews" the MFA Boston refers to these works as "Art with a Past".

What art doesn't have a past?

Unfortunately, in the United States, the field of art history is largely a sham - and the lack of academic attention to provenance is endemic. If a Picasso, a Pisarro or an El Greco was looted from a Jew, U.S. art historians generally don't know and don't care -- and resent any inquiry from families of the murder victims.  How could three generations of art historians permit U.S. museums to collect so much art without knowing where it comes from? These are vast quantities of artworks, not a few accidents. At all relevant times, receiving and concealing stolen property has been a crime. But unfortunately, no U.S.prosecutor has had the gumption, the evidence and the fortitude to confront this stolen art laundering establishment. The criminals in the museum community concealing the stolen art are now claiming a "fiduciary duty" to keep the stolen art in their collections.

The College Art Association was warned by the U.S. State Department not to purchase artworks coming from Europe without checking the provenance in the early 1950's.  The Roberts Commission warned America in 1946 of the same problem.

Although the MFA claims it has engaged in "intensive research" since 2004, to my knowledge, it has published none of this research including its provenance researcher's report on the Kokoscha "Two Nudes - Lovers".

The fact that the MFA can get away with this without any public furor means that there is not one art historian in Boston doing his or her job.


From the MFA website:

Nazi Era Provenance Research

The Museum of Fine Arts’ collection contains approximately 1,600 European paintings and 21,000 works of sculpture and decorative art. Since early 1998, a systematic review of the provenance of the collection has been ongoing, with the goal of identifying objects that may have been seized or improperly sold during the Nazi era. Eliminated from consideration are those works of art acquired by the museum before 1933 and those created after 1945.

About half the European paintings have histories of ownership that preclude their transfer in Europe during the period in question—many, for instance, belonged to families in Boston in the late nineteenth century and came directly to the MFA from those families. But many other paintings have histories of ownership that contain very little detail or have gaps during the years 1933-1945. These objects are the subject of further research by the museum.
Intensive research on the sculpture and decorative arts collection was begun in 2004. The online records are currently undergoing further research. As additional information comes to light, it will be added to the online collections database.
There are many reasons for gaps in provenance, ranging from a past owner’s desire for anonymity to an absence of records of transactions. Resolving provenance gaps for the period in question may be further complicated by the fact that records have been lost or destroyed. Although it is probable that most of the objects with gaps do not have problematic pasts, efforts are underway to obtain more information about them.
List of Works
The objects featured on the list of works have been identified by the MFA as priorities for further research. They changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945, and are associated with individuals who may have lost property as the result of Nazi persecution. Each object has undergone careful examination by our curators and still has unresolved questions regarding its history.
The inclusion of a work of art on this list does not in any way demonstrate that it was looted or improperly acquired. The list will be updated as further information becomes available.

I tried to access the "List of Works" link, but was unable to connect with anything.   How many people are working in this "systematic" effort?  What is their budget?  How much is the MFA spending suing the heirs of Holocaust victims instead of researching its collection, returning stolen artworks and apologizing to their victims?

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Art Litigation: Nazi Liquidation of Picasso's Jewish Dealer By Nazis Makes News In Germany

Thea Sterheim's 1911 Portrait of Alfred Flechtheim

The art press in the United States and art historians here have obliterated Alfred Flechtheim from the history of 20th Century Art.  In Germany, where Holocaust denial is illegal, museums are starting to confront the truth about the Nazi liquidation of Flechtheim's collection, and a critical press is scolding museums who are not doing the right thing.

New York's art press is asleep at the wheel.   My earlier posts on Flechtheim here.

Translation of the article “Er war sein bester Kunde” by Tobias Timm in Die Zeit - Nr.28 - July 8, 2010

He Was His Own Best Client

The legendary Flechtheim collection was liquidated by the Nazis. Now the heirs demand justice.


This case concerning unresolved Nazi-history is of such a dimension that it will probably occupy the biggest German museums for months, if not for years. It appears as if artworks that once belonged to the art dealer and publisher Alfred Flechtheim are hanging in dozens of institutions such as the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Bavarian State Collection of Paintings in Munich, the State-Gallery Stuttgart or the Berlin State Museums. Last week it became public that the heirs of Flechtheim are claiming back a portrait of the actress Tilla Durieux by Oskar Kokoschka from the Ludwig Museum. Further requests and restitution demands apparently concern major works by Max Beckmann, Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso.

Alfred Flechtheim was a central figure of the art market in the Weimar Republic. After Paul Cassirer, he is considered among the most important patrons of avant-garde art. Born in 1878 as the son of a successful wheat dealer, he started collecting art around 1900. In 1913 he opened his own gallery in Dusseldorf. After the First World War, in which Flechtheim served as a cavalry officer, he moved to Berlin. With dozens of exhibitions, he successfully represented the French cubists, in addition to George Grosz, Willi Baumeister, and Paul Klee. Flechtheim was also what is most despised among art dealers – he was his own best client.

Flechtheim was not only dealing and collecting, he also wrote art critiques, founded the magazine Querschnitt and enriched the Berlin society life with salons and soirees. “If I was a painter” the Boxer Max Schmeling writes in his homage to Flechtheim at is 50th birthday in 1928 “I want to be in Flechtheim’s stable”.

Already before the Nazis came to power the dealer was bombarded with hate articles by Nazi authors who recognized Flechtheim’s significance regarding the art that they denounced as degenerate. This led to Flechtheim fleeing already at the end of 1933, over Zurich and Paris to London where he died in 1937, probably due to blood poisoning.

Flechtheim’s gallery was immediately aryanized, and his private collection, which included works by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Willi Baumeister and Vincent van Gogh was liquidated from 1933 on under the pressure of Nazi persecution. For the past two years, Flechtheim’s heirs, with the help of lawyers, have been searching for the paintings and sculptures from the former Flechtheim collection. The whereabouts of various paintings is unclear today, but a good hundred of them, estimates the Marburg lawyer Stötzel, ended up in museums in America and Germany. Many of the artworks will have to be restituted by public museums in accordance with the Washington principles regarding transaction involving Nazi looted art.


The Durieux portrait by Kokoschka, for example, belonged to Flechtheim’s private collection and was sold to the collector Josef Haubrich in 1934 by the “aryanizer” of his Dusseldorf gallery, Alex Vömel, for 1800 Reichsmark, a price that was below the 1931 insurance value of the painting. The low price and the absence of records proving that Flechtheim received the sales proceeds from Vömel and that he was able to freely dispose of the sales proceeds, make this a clear case of Nazi looted art, according to the heirs’ lawyer.

The City of Cologne has, however, refused to give the painting back so far. The provenance of the painting, says Kaspar König, director of the Ludwig Museum, to ZEIT, is not fully resolved. He says the history is more complex, but details will not yet be published since research is still ongoing.


Exactly which paintings are being claimed back by the heirs from different museums is something neither the attorney nor the museums involved wanted to comment on. The Hamburg Kunsthalle, however, known for their special commitment to provenance research, was able to successfully exclude that Klee’s Felsige Küste (1931) was from Flechtheim’s collection. In contrast to this, other museums, eleven years after their commitment to the return of looted art, are showing only little impetus to research their holdings.

Museums stonewalling Jews is nothing new, but it is good to see that the German press is critical of museums that do not return art stolen from Jews.

In the U.S., museum directors who hold on to artworks stolen from Jews get big promotions.  When will any American museum recognize Flechtheim's contribution to 20th Century art?  And when will they admit that the art in their collections was stolen from Flechtheim by a Nazi?   If a German newspaper can publish these things, why won't the New York Times?


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Law Prof: American Museums Have Violated Washington Principles on Nazi-Looted Art

Two Nudes (Lovers)

1913

Kokoschka, Oskar, Austrian, 1886–1980

163.2 x 97.5 cm (64 1/4 x 38 3/8 in.)

Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Professor Jennifer Anglim Kreder compiled a chart of Holocaust-era art cases decided in U.S. federal courts since 2004.  The results are bleak, and show that American museums have systematically violated the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art.

I wrote about the excellent panel Prof. Kreder organized in Washington DC on a US Commission on Nazi-Looted Art here.

Nazi Looted Art, Fernand Leger and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Last week the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts had restituted Fernand Leger's 1911 painting "Smoke Over Rooftops" to the heirs of Alfonse Kann. The article is here. According to the article, it took the heirs ten years of researching and working with the MIA to achieve restitution.
Why such a delay? Many archives are not accessible, much research remains to be done. And there is very little research into a central figure in Nazi art looting: Curt Valentin. Valentin was mentioned in passing in Lynn Nicholas's excellent and groundbreaking work The Rape of Europa (now a film available on DVD).
Curt Valentin left Berlin in 1937 to establish an art gallery in New York City. The gallery was named after Karl Buchholz, one of the four art dealers appointed by Hitler to liquidate art considered "degenerate" by the Nazi regime. I have included a jpeg image above of a letter dated November 14, 1936 from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts to Curt Valentin stating the following:
Re: Your letter of 22 September 1936
The President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts instructed me to tell you that it would be of no objection to him if you make use of your connections with the German art circle and thereby establish supplementary export opportunities, if [this is done] outside Germany. Once you are in a foreign country, you are free to purchase works by German artists in Germany and make use of them in America. ###
The letter bears a stamp with an eagle clutching a wreathed Swastika and is found in the Jane Wade papers, Archives of American Art, microfilm reel #2322, frame 929.
The collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see provenance of El Lissitzky's Proun 2 here, the Museum of Modern Art (a search of the website finds over 40 results for Valentin including a Beckmann here) and many others are full of works purchased from Curt Valentin. When art dealer Otto Kallir came to the United States from Vienna, Austria in 1939, he went to Curt Valentin's gallery on 57th Street in New York City to pick up artworks safely transported out of Nazi Austria. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has a Beckmann portrait of Valentin here.
Curt Valentin was also the art dealer of choice for Alfred Barr, the founder of the Museum of Modern Art. As Alice Goldfarb Marquis, author of Alfred H. Barr Jr.: Missionary for the Modern, wrote to the New York Times here,
On June 30, 1939, the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne auctioned 150 items. Many dealers boycotted the sale of these stolen works. One of the bidders was Curt Valentin, a German refugee dealer, who owned the Buchholz Gallery in New York. He was there at the behest of Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who provided money donated to the museum.
Mr. Valentin bought five works: Andre Derain's "Valley of the Lot at Vers," stolen from the Cologne Museum; E. L. Kirchner's "Street Scene" and Wilhelm Lehmbruck's "Kneeling Woman," both taken from the Berlin National Gallery; Paul Klee's "Around the Fish," pilfered from the Dresden Gallery, and Henri Matisse's "Blue Window," seized from the Essen Museum.
So why don't all of the other museums return the stolen artworks that they purchased through Curt Valentin? Why don't the other museums frankly acknowledge Curt Valentin's status as a Nazi agent from 1936 through the end of the war?

On Saturday, September 16, 1944, the Federal Register published an Executive Order dated May 29, 1944 describing a seizure of enemy property by the Alien Property Custodian (a U.S. official empowered by the Trading With the Enemy Act). The seizure was of Karl Buchholz's property, destined for Curt Valentin's gallery on 32 East 57th Street. The list (it looks like over 200 artworks) includes the following artist: Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Otto Dix, Werner Gilles, Erich Heckel, Carol Hofer, Heinrich Campandonc, Gerhard Marcks, Otto Mueller, E.V. Nay, Emil Nolde, Gaston Louis Roux, K. Schmidt-Rottluff, Renee Sindonis, Alex Jawlensky, Oskar Kokoschka, George Kolbe, Kaethe Kollwitz, Alfred Kubin, Wilhelm Lembruck, Fernand Leger, and August Macke.

If you wish to have a moment of tranquility in New York City, you can to to the MOMA's beautiful garden. You'll find August Rodin's Monument to Balzac (1898). It was presented in memory of Curt Valentin by his friends.