The heirs of a Jewish couple who fled Nazi Germany are suing New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art over “Olive Picking,” an 1889 Vincent van Gogh oil painting they claim was looted by the Nazis during World War II and later trafficked through New York’s art world.
According to the lawsuit filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Hedwig and Frederick Stern purchased the painting in 1935, one year before fleeing Munich, Germany, with their six children, The New York Times reported.
The Nazi regime declared the painting “German cultural property,” forbidding the Sterns from taking it abroad. A Nazi-appointed “trustee” sold the painting, and the proceeds were seized by the Third Reich.
The Met acquired it from wealthy collector Vincent Astor in 1956 for $125,000. The museum later sold it in 1972 to Greek shipping magnate Basil Goulandris and his wife. The Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation displays the work at its museum in Athens. Both the foundation and a Goulandris family member are named as co-defendants.
The suit alleges that the Met and its then-curator of European paintings, Theodore Rousseau Jr., a leading expert on Nazi art looting, “knew or should have known” the work had been stolen, per the Times.
In a statement, the Met said it “takes seriously its longstanding commitment to address Nazi-era claims,” asserting that information regarding the Sterns’ ownership of the artwork “did not become available until several decades after the painting left the museum’s collection.”
A previous claim, filed in a San Francisco federal court in 2022 by the Sterns’ descendants, was dismissed earlier this year on jurisdictional grounds.
