The College Fix

A story coming out of the University of Oklahoma raises some interesting moral questions.

It involves a museum, a very valuable work of art, and an allegation that that work of art was stolen from a Jew by the Nazis during World War II.

The Jewish Daily Forward reports some details on the history of the painting in question:

French woman is suing the University of Oklahoma to recover a Nazi-looted painting that was taken from her father.

Leone Meyer, the daughter of Raoul Meyer, a Jewish businessman in Paris during the Nazi occupation of France, is attempting to recover the 1886 impressionist work “Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep,” by Camille Pissarro, the Oklahoman reported this week.

It has been hanging in the university’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art since 2000…

And over at Chicago Now, Howard Moore writes more about the painting and its original owner:

Meyer survived the war and the painting turned up in Switzerland. In 1953, Meyer filed a suit trying to recover the painting. A Swiss court ruled against him saying that the statute of limitations had passed.

The painting eventually ended up in a New York City art gallery and was purchased by Norman, Oklahoma oilman Aaron Weitzenhoffer and his wife Clara, in 1956.

The Weitzenhoffer’s had an extensive collection of art and when Clara died in 2000, she left 33 pieces to The Fred Jones Museum of Art, on the campus of The University of Oklahoma.

These cases present fascinating ethical questions, especially when a piece of art has been bought and sold, and has changed hands several times over the many decades since the great war.

The world of fine arts is dealing with many similar ownership controversies these days. The more this issue stays in the news, the more Nazi-stolen art seems to show up around the world.

If you paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, or perhaps millions for a work of fine art, having no idea at all that it was stolen by the Nazis, should you be legally forced to give it back to the descendent of its original owner? And if the legal question is settled, what about the moral question? It’s hard to make proper restitution for a wrong done so long ago by the hands of those who are now dead, when the only ones who can really “pay” that restitution had nothing at all to do with the original wrong.

On the other hand, when a museum receives a stolen work of art as a gift, as is the case in this instance, it turns the moral equation on its head.

The painting, in this case, didn’t cost the Fred Jones Museum anything. So giving the painting back to the descendent of Raoul Mayer wouldn’t actually “cost” the museum anything–except the ability to enjoy the painting as part of its collection, of course.

There is the question of the Weitzennhoffer’s will, which, of course, would be violated, in a sense, if the painting was removed from the university art museum. But it wouldn’t actually cost the Weitzennhoffers anything since they are no longer alive, and would be oblivious to the fact.

Besides, who’s to say that the Weitzennhoffers wouldn’t have wanted to bequeath the painting to Mayer’s daughter, had they known about its true history? Their son, by the way, says his parents knew nothing of the Nazi connection, and that their will wouldn’t necessarily prevent the museum from returning the painting to Mayer’s daughter.

So you end up with a bit of a stalemate. But, in this case, it would be nice if the museum returned the piece, or else if the museum could compensate the rightful owner’s descendant in proportion to the painting’s value.

For now, the university seems to be sticking its heels in the ground.

To get an idea of the painting’s potential value, consider a recent sale of another Pissaro oil painting at the Christie’s auction house–at a final price of $4.6 million.

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