Judge orders the Art Institute of Chicago to restitute Nazi-looted Schiele drawing

A New York judge ruled on Wednesday (23 April) that the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) must return a Nazi-looted Egon Schiele drawing, the latest development in a yearslong battle between the museum and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

New York Supreme Court Judge Althea Drysdale’s ruling runs 79 pages, and it took her 25 minutes to read her order in court, according to Graham Bowley and Tom Mashberg in The New York Times. Drysdale called Schiele’s 1916 Russian War Prisoner “stolen property for the last 86 years”, ever since it was taken by the Nazis from the Austrian Jewish cabaret performer Fritz Grünbaum. (Grünbaum was murdered at Dachau in 1941.)

The AIC purchased the drawing in 1966, displaying it proudly until it was “seized in place” by the Manhattan DA’s Art Trafficking Unit in 2023 on a warrant signed by Drysdale. At the time, it was estimated the drawing was worth $1.25m. The museum has been fighting to retain the work ever since, arguing last year that “never once, in decades of litigation and investigation squarely focused on the Grünbaums’ art collection, has a single shred of documentary evidence emerged to support the theory that the Nazi regime physically seized and then sold or otherwise disposed of the Grünbaums’ art collection”.

The AIC has long held that Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, sold the drawing voluntarily in the 1950s from a family storage unit. Drysdale begs to differ, noting that the storage company that held the drawing and other works from Grünbaum’s collection was Nazi-run.

“It’s highly improbable that Mathilde Lukacs ever obtained proper title to Russian War Prisoner,” Drysdale said, adding that instead of looking deeper into the issue, the museum “relied upon the assurances of a discredited art dealer with an obvious self-serving agenda”. The late dealer Eberhard Kornfeld had told the AIC that he acquired the drawing from Lukacs directly, but investigators have concluded that the invoices he presented had been forged—some even misspelled Lukacs’s name in the signatures.

The AIC has also argued that the case is outside the jurisdiction of the Manhattan DA’s Office. Drysdale found that this was not the case, as the drawing had been owned by New York’s Galerie St. Etienne before making its way to Chicago. More than 80 other Schiele works from Grünbaum’s collection had made their way to New York as well, and many of them have been the subject of restitution claims. Institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art, as well as several private collectors, have been more than willing to return Schiele’s art to Grünbaum’s heirs. Nevertheless, the AIC continues to fight.

“We are disappointed with the ruling,” an AIC spokesperson told The New York Times in a statement. “We are reviewing the court’s decision and will look at all available options for appeal.”