 By now you may have heard that Yale University filed a lawsuit in Connecticut federal court on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 asserting its ownership rights over Vincent van Gogh's The Night Café (1888). Yale added this canvas to its permanent collection in 1961, when collector Stephen Carlton Clark (1882-1960; Yale Class of 1903) bequeathed it to his alma mater. Clark (who is a fabulous story unto himself) bought The Night Café from the Knoedler Gallery, New York City branch, in 1933 or 1934. The Knoedler Gallery bought it from the Soviet government after the latter ordered the State Hermitage Museum and the Russian Museum to sell works of art under a February, 1928 directive. In terms of provenance, this is actually quite straightforward; I have read plenty that contain loads of inexplicable ownership gaps, but The Night Café is not one of them. So, what prompted this preemptive strike by Yale?
His name is Pierre Konowaloff, and he is the great-grandson of the Russian collector, Ivan Morozov (1871-1921). As an aside, could everyone please quit referring to Mr. Konowaloff as Morozov's "alleged" or "purported" great-grandson; not only is this rather rude in implying that DNA tests should be done, here is a Morozov-Konowaloff genealogy page for which, we should assume, backing birth, death and marriage documentation exists.
Konowaloff asserts that The Night Café--and a great many other works of art--rightfully belongs to him as Ivan Morozov's heir. This is an assertion he has made before, most notably and recently with the traveling exhibition From Russia. He contends that Great-grandfather Ivan's formidable Modern art collection was illegally seized in 1918, by decree of Vladimir Lenin, and should be returned.
There is, of course, a strong emotional argument to be made here. I am not completely unsympathetic to the plight of heirs or unfeeling about bullying in general (much less when it is done with armed soldiers). However. Let the record show that Mr. Morozov's art collection was "nationalized" in 1918. Doing the math, that was 91 years ago, and 35 years before Pierre Konowaloff entered the world. Furthermore, said nationalization did not violate International law, unlike, say, the myriad "appropriations" of the German National Socialist party from the mid-1930s until May of 1945. Finally, no other Morozov heirs came forward to protest this particular sale in the early 1930s OR when the Stephen C. Clark Bequests were publicized in 1960.
Now, it's pretty clear that I'm not a lawyer. Just an advocate of common sense--something that, quite frankly, often seems to fly out the window in the face of multi-million dollar canvases. Look, lots of my ancestors got screwed by whatever System was is power at the time, too. I'll bet lots of yours did as well. Does that mean that we get to sue on behalf of our Greats, Great-greats and so on over things like lost farmland now covered with McMansions or crappy immigrant ship conditions? No. No, it doesn't. Not in the Real World. In the Real World, one's husband's aunt-by-marriage steals the entire family holdings, dies, leaves it to her nieces and nephews unrelated by blood and there's not a damned thing that can be done about it. One moves on and hopes for good karma.
I think, with works of art, repatriation claims have gotten way out of hand. Museums that hold contested works bought them in good faith 99% of the time. They have kept them under optimum conditions for public education for decades, if not much, much longer. They have footed all costs--beyond the purchase price, if applicable--to house works in climate controlled, secure environments, overseen by highly skilled curators, conservators and archivists whose salaries are not inexpensive. It grates my cheese to read that said museums are scoring beaucoup bucks off of famous canvases, as if these institutions don't incur operating expenses to the individual tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars per month.
Keeping in mind that my opinion means nothing in a court of law, I'm inclined to say, hey, you want "your" stuff back? Repay the original purchase price + accrued operating costs + compounded interest on both of the above over x-amount of years + guarantee, in writing, that you'll house the object in an as-good-or-better environment that offers public access. Free admission, too, since it's never "about the money," right? In other words, Dear Righteous Ones, put up or shut up. And just in case my true sympathies over this out of left-field Night Café issue aren't completely clear (*ahem*): Boola, Boola. |
