Museums Lobby Against Strengthening a Holocaust Art Recovery Law

New York Times

4 days ago

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.
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