Exactly. What's the big deal? How much are they spending to keep this...
Girl With Black Hair Egon Schiele
Posted on 10/02/2023 5:56:03 AM PDT by george76
The Manhattan D.A. recently issued a criminal seizure warrant for ‘Girl With Black Hair’ in the possession of Oberlin College’s Allen Museum. Court records in a civil case reveal that the college has been fighting at least since 2006 against return of the drawing. This is in contrast to the college’s repatriation of an item of Native American craft returned to the Nez Perce tribe in 2002. Are items stolen from Jews during the Holocaust less worthy of return than items obtained from Native American tribes?
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Oberlin College was in the news recently after a drawing, Girl With Black Hair, by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, was the subject of a criminal seizure warrant out of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
The D.A. is attempting to recover that drawing and others located at other museums and private collections, which were stolen by the Nazis from Fritz Grünbaum, a prominent Jewish art collector and cabaret artist, who was forced under duress to sign over rights to his collection as part of the Nazi confiscation of Jewish property, while interned at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he died in 1941.
While the criminal warrant to Oberlin College and two other institutions put the dispute in the current headlines, the Grünbaum heirs have have been trying at least since 2006 to get Oberlin College to return the drawing, to no avail. We have not seen that long history reported before, and we learned of it while reviewing court filings in a civil case filed against Oberlin College and others in late 2022, which Oberlin College also is fighting. Among other things, Oberlin College disputes the constitutionality of applying the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016.
Oberlin College’s fight to avoid returning this stolen art is in contrast to the college’s repatriation of an item of Native American craft returned to the Nez Perce tribe in 2002. Are items stolen from Jews during the Holocaust less worthy of return than items obtained from Native American tribes?
Girl With Black Hair At Oberlin College’s Allen Museum..
The Allen Museum is as woke as the rest of Oberlin College, recently featuring a show pushing back against ‘anti-woke’ pushback:
Hey America: If you’re tired of MAGA “anti-woke” culture war politics and you’d like to see a cultural response from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum, Ohio has an art museum for you: The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.
Special exhibitions on view now at the Allen explore everything from racism at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 to the question of how artworks communicate the idea of sexual consent — a big topic on college campuses, and in workplaces….
Since it opened in 1917, the Allen’s excellent collection has grown to encompass more than 15,000 objects spanning 6,000 years of art history….
But this summer [of 2023], especially, the museum seems eager to address the culture wars, although it’s not saying so overtly. The tone of the exhibitions on view is scholarly and above the fray, but there’s no mistaking the museum’s opposition to the current right-wing campaign against the teaching of Black history or the pursuit of rights for LGBTQ persons….
Still, it’s clear that the Allen is sympathetic to contemporary artists whose politics lean left.
The NY Times reported on September 13, 2023, about the dispute over the stolen artwork:
New York investigators on Wednesday seized three artworks from three out-of-state museums that they said had been stolen from a Jewish art collector killed during the Holocaust and rightly belonged to the Nazi victim’s heirs.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office issued warrants to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College in Ohio, for works by the 1900s Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. According to the warrants, “there is reasonable cause to believe” that the works constitute stolen property.
Prosecutors say the artworks rightly belong to three living heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a prominent Jewish art collector and cabaret artist killed at the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1941.
The Associated Press added more details, including Oberlin College’s assertion that its purchase was and its current possession is lawful:
The son of a Jewish art dealer in what was then Moravia, Grünbaum studied law but began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906.
A well-known performer in Vienna and Berlin by the time Adolf Hitler rose to power, Grünbaum challenged the Nazi authorities in his work. He once quipped from a darkened stage, “I can’t see a thing, not a single thing; I must have stumbled into National Socialist culture.”
Grünbaum was arrested and sent to Dachau in 1938. He gave his final performance for fellow inmates on New Year’s Eve 1940 while gravely ill, then died on Jan. 14, 1941.
The three pieces seized by Bragg’s office are: “Russian War Prisoner,” a watercolor and pencil on paper piece valued at $1.25 million, which was seized from the Art Institute; “Portrait of a Man,” a pencil on paper drawing valued at $1 million and seized from the Carnegie Museum of Art; and “Girl With Black Hair,” a watercolor and pencil on paper work valued at $1.5 million and taken from Oberlin….
In a statement, Oberlin said it was cooperating with investigators and was “confident that Oberlin College legally acquired Egon Schiele’s Girl with Black Hair in 1958, and that we lawfully possess it.
“We believe that Oberlin is not the target of the Manhattan DA’s criminal investigation into this matter,” the statement added.
Before the warrants were issued Wednesday, the Grünbaum heirs had filed civil claims against the three museums and several other defendants seeking the return of artworks that they say were looted from Grünbaum.
They won a victory in 2018 when a New York judge ruled that two works by Schiele had to be turned over to Grünbaum’s heirs under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act, passed by Congress in 2016.
The portrait is listed on the Allen Museum website, and apparently is being held by the college now for the benefit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, pending further proceedings regarding the warrant:
The Museum does not currently have the drawing on physical display, but has brought it for exhibition in other locations over the years, the local Chronicle reports:
The drawing has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe more than a dozen times since 1956, according to a list of exhibits on the Allen Museum’s website. The last 10 times were at the museum itself, between 1986 and 2014.The Allen Art Museum’s website lists “Girl with Black Hair,” in watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, as “not on view” at the museum. Created in 1911, the drawing is 17 11/16 by 12 7/16 inches.
“This arresting drawing by Austrian artist Egon Schiele is related to a lost oil painting of the same model, there fully clothed, executed in the same year. While it likely functioned as a preparatory work for that painting, the drawing is finished in its own right, rather than serving merely as a sketch. It is also closely related to at least four other drawings of the same year that depict the same model,” according to the page dedicated to “Girl with Black Hair” on the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s website.
“Unlike many of his other drawings of nudes, Schiele here pays great attention to the girl’s face. Her heavy-lidded, dark-smudged eyes with their distant gaze and the sharply angular contours of her nose and chin give her an air of intense tiredness, belying the red of her rosebud lips and cheek,” the museum’s description reads. “The extremely spare rendering of the sitter’s midsection and breasts contrasts with the heavy, dark watercolor masses of her hair and skirt. Her bare knees slightly protrude below the edge of her skirt, as she sits back, legs behind her and to the side, and add yet another note of vulnerability.”
“With such works by Schiele and Klimt, as well as Pechstein, Kokoschka, Schmidt-Rottluff, Jawlensky, Klee, and Kollwitz, the AMAM has a small but important collection of Expressionist art,” according to the Allen Museum’s website.
The Oberlin Review, the college’s student newspaper, noted that seven other pieces of artwork (not including the one in the possession of the college) were recently returned, as reported in The NY Times:
Seven works by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele will be handed over on Wednesday to the heirs of the Viennese cabaret artist who had owned them before he was murdered by the Nazis, according to Manhattan prosecutors, marking a major turning point in one of the art world’s longest-running Holocaust restitution cases.
The ceremony to return the artworks to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, who was killed in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941, was scheduled to be held at the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, which investigated the case.
“This is of huge importance in our world,” said one of the Grünbaum heirs, Timothy Reif, referring to the descendants of Holocaust victims seeking the return of looted property nearly 80 years after the end of World War II. “It sets the tone and the agenda for all future cases.”
The criminal warrant which has generated so much attention comes after several civil court lawsuits were filed in late 2022 against Oberlin College and other entities holding stolen artwork. Those civil case filings revealed even more than has been reported. .
Fighting Return Since At Least 2006..
The civil case against Oberlin College’s Allen Memorial Art Museum was filed in NY State court on December 15, 2022, then removed by Oberlin College in March 2023 to federal court.
Oberlin College has moved to dismiss the First Amended Complaint, and the Grünbaum Heirs have cross-moved for summary judgment. You can read these pleadings, which set forth the parties’ asserted facts and legal positions. Those court filings reveal a dispute going back at least until 2006. You can see how hard Oberlin College has been fighting to hold onto the artwork:
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Why Not Just Return Girl With Black Hair?
Why such a long and hard fight – starting at least in 2006 – to hold onto Girl With Black Hair? It’s not like returning Girl With Black Hair would strike a serious financial blow to the college or cause a serious disruption to the Allen Museum. It’s just one drawing out of 15,000 in the museum that sits in storage and not even on display.
There is precedent for Oberlin College returning items wrongfully (but not necessarily illegally) acquired. In 2002, Oberlin College returned a twined root bag that had been taken from the Nez Perce tribe a century before, and even held a symposium celebrating the return:
...
why fight for so long the return of an item stolen by the Nazis during the Holocaust? Why not treat it like the twined root bag returned to the Nez Perce tribe, where ethics and morality — not the law — led Oberlin College to give up its possession? Are items stolen from Jews during the Holocaust less worthy of non-legal ethical considerations than items obtained from Native American tribes?
Why wait until the legal and public pressure mounts? Why not have returned the artwork in 2006, or last year when a civil lawsuit seeking its return was filed. Will it really take a criminal seizure warrant to get back this stolen property?
It’s often said that “integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” No one was watching Oberlin College as relates to Girl With Black Hair for most of the 17 years Oberlin College has been fighting its return. Oberlin College had almost two decades to do the right thing as to the stolen drawing, when no one was watching. Now people are watching, so no virtue signaling is warranted if Oberlin College finally gives up possession of the drawing.
Oberlin College, which professes its social justice bona fides, apparently didn’t consider the return of a stolen drawing taken by the Nazis from a Jewish Holocaust victim to be social justice.
Oberlin seems like a swell place. They tried to screw that bakery, and now this.
The entire leadership of that misbegotten joke of a college should be in prison along with all of the “professors”.
L
Universities ... This Republics cancerous tumors
Oberlin is a “woke” school with troubles galore:
Trudeau and pals celebrated a Waffen SS Nazi recently in Canada.
-2- Oberlin College’s ‘Professor of Peace’ endorsed fatwa to murder Salman Rushdie..
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4088768/posts
Pretty simple way a leftist determines whether a stolen item should be returned.
Was it from a “white” person?
What. in. the. F. are they spending their money on????????????????????? They sure fought to not pay a deserved settlement and are now refusing to hand over artwork stolen from people who were incinerated????? I am SURE if it were an artifact from slavery, Oberlin College would RIOT, BURN AND DESTROY EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING to get it back. Of course, you can’t expect liberals to act human, civilized and in non savage ways.
“The college experienced financial difficulties in its early years. Shipherd went on several fundraising tours out East, while trustees John Keep and William Dawes journeyed to Britain to generate financial support. Keep and Dawes lectured about Oberlin in private homes, meeting houses, and church halls, raising funds primarily from the abolitionist community. After 18 months, they returned with $30,000 in gold, the equivalent of 640 million dollars in today’s terms.
Those donations saved Oberlin.”
https://www.oberlin.edu/about-oberlin/oberlin-history
“Stolen” suggests civil law is being enforced at the time. Wars are the lack of civil law.
If you don’t want war, which is killing people and breaking things, then ya gotta do the things that don’t make war or do the things needed to stop a war.
What’s next, people going to sue for the bombings of their cities in WWII? “The USA bombed my house, and I want compensation!”
Highly recommend Berry College in NW Georgia. It has the largest campus in the world (27,000 beautiful ac) and every student iirc has a “job”. Our granddaughter’s is on the “ropes course” - I think she “hooks up” students so they don’t fall and break their necks: https://www.berry.edu/
Oberlin is one of the most liberal, leftists, schools in the country. It’s interesting to see the courses they offer (e.g., Social Justice in Dance, Earth Science and Social Justice, Doin’ Time: A History of Black Incarceration). These are all courses that fulfill part of the graduation requirements.
“In a statement, Oberlin said it was cooperating with investigators and was “confident that Oberlin College legally acquired Egon Schiele’s Girl with Black Hair in 1958, and that we lawfully possess it.”
There are thousands of people every single day selling stolen goods that say the exact same thing.
Exactly. What's the big deal? How much are they spending to keep this...
Girl With Black Hair Egon Schiele
Receiving Stolen Property and Possession of Stolen Property is a FELONY.
WHy are there NO Criminal Charges pending??
NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW
Liberals hate Jews............
That college is run by a$$holes….. always picking fights…..
Of your grandpa brought home that drawing from the war and they knew it was there and you refused? An FBI swat team would attack your house at 6am.
There are three reasons for the double standard:
1. Jews don’t riot (in America, anyway).
2. Leftists hate Jews. There is a deep antisemitism, justified in quiet talk, in academia.
3. The Jews in question are white.
It’s just a plan by The Man to keep the bruthuh down.
/s
I believe antisemitism is demonically inspired.
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