www.amazus.org

It’s amazing how nowadays there’s still stolen art by the Nazis being exposed in some museums. The rightful owners see themselves obliged to head to museums like the one I’m going to write about just to see their own works which they didn’t had intention of getting rid off.

At The Leopold Museum in Vienna there’s currently one exhibition by the Austrian artist Albin Egger-Lienz were you can find between the works 14 Nazi-looted paintings. Also not shown but held in the museum permanent collection there’s the magnificent painting by Egon Schiele, 1914, houses on the lake which was stolen by the Nazis from the Jewish owner Jenny Steiner.

Although the director of the museum refuses to have any knowledge about the provenance of Houses until 1998 there are accusations made by the Austria Green Party and other singulars that say that Leopold is wrongly holding the Nazi-looted paintings.

Leopold Museum isn’t restituting those paintings because it’s a private institution. This museum has been founded by the government and shouldn’t this have some weight into making the museum return the works of art as the government museums have to? If it wasn’t a private institution the law could make the museum give back the paintings due to Austria’s law regarding Nazi-looted art.

It’s a pity to see such actions protected by Austria’s laws but we can only expect that the government will reconsider those laws in order not to allow such situations to happen again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 3:54 pm and is filed under art, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.