Professor Jennifer Kreder filed an amicus curiae brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in support of an estate connected to a World War II-era Jewish German businessman seeking recovery of a painting, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he had to sell below value decades earlier to pay for his family’s flight from Nazism and fascism. The museum acquired Pablo Picasso’s “The Actor” as a donation in 1952, but did not acknowledge its prior ownership until 2011.
The amicus in Zuckerman v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art argues that, “No United States case to date has addressed the uncomfortable issue of ‘Flight Art’ head-on. ‘Flight Art’ should be defined as artworks Nazi persecutees were forced to sell to pay the discriminatory taxes, including the infamous Flight Tax … to flee the continent.” The District Court held that the estate had not shown under New York law that the painting had been sold under duress.
Six Chase students – Erin Melcher Beam, Leigh Schell, Landon Norman, Ashley Taulbee, Mary O’Brien, and Emilee Buttrum – assisted in drafting and filing the brief. The brief, on behalf of B’nai B’rith International, et al., is at https://www.jenniferkreder.com/publications
