The Metropolitan Museum of Art “secretly” sold a Van Gogh masterpiece in order to hide its Nazi looted past, a lawsuit alleges. Brooke Astor had sold it to the Met.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is being accused of “secretly” selling a Van Gogh masterpiece looted from Jews fleeing the Nazis — and trying to organize a cover-up designed to last for 100 years.
Stern and her family had a wealthy life in Munich, displaying art in their home. But they were forced to flee Nazi persecution, and unable to take with them their art, including a Van Gogh and a Renoir. Van Gogh, seen in a self-portrait, painted “The Olive Picking” a few months before his death. It was one of 15 of a series inspired by the annual harvest in Provence.Socialite Brooke Astor and her husband Vincent, whose portrait she was photographed in front of, once owned the Van Gogh. Vincent Astor bought it in New York after World War II.
In 1955 Brooke Astor asked Manhattan gallery Knoedler & Co. to sell the Van Gogh to a museum, according to court papers. A US Navy officer, he worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA, investigating Nazi art theft until 1946. “He was one of the world experts on looted art,” the Stern family contend.Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed and Betrayals that Made the Metropolitan Museum of ArtThis was the passport Hedwig Stern used to get out of Germany in 1936, escaping the persecution which ended in the Holocaust for safety in the US.
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