Why are the Picasso paintings staying in NYC?”
Picasso paintings to stay at NYC museums **FILE** This Feb. 18, 2004 file photo shows a visitor looking at Pablo Picasso’s painting “Boy Leading a Horse” at the New National Gallery in Berlin. Two leading New York City museums will remain the owners of this Picasso painting after settling claims by the heirs of a Jewish banker that the family was forced by the Nazis to sell the work of art. The settlement was announced in Manhattan federal court on Monday, Feb. 2, 2009 as the case was about to go to trial.
NEW YORK – Two famed early works by Pablo Picasso will stay in New York City museums after the institutions reached an out-of-court settlement over a lawsuit alleging that the previous owner was forced by the Nazis to sell his artworks in the 1930s. The settlement was announced in Manhattan federal court Monday as the case was about to go to trial. Details of the settlement, including the amount to be paid to the heirs, were not released. The family of a Jewish banker sued the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation for the paintings, Picasso’s “Boy Leading a Horse,” owned by MoMA, and the Guggenheim’s “Le Moulin de la Galette.” U.S. District Judge Hon. Jed Rakoff concluded last week that the family of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who died in 1935, had produced enough evidence that the paintings had been sold under Nazi duress for the case to go to trial. Before his death, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy took steps that an heir, Julius Schoeps, said were intended to protect
