The family members of a Jewish couple have filed a lawsuit against The Met, asserting that a Vincent van Gogh oil painting was looted by the Nazis.
Origins of the Dispute
According to the lawsuit, Frederick and Hedwig Stern bought the piece, titled Olive Picking, in 1935. The following year, they were forced to flee their home in Munich on the eve of WWII.
The suit contends that the Met, which acquired the masterpiece in the 1950s for one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, should have known it was probably stolen property. The heirs are now demanding the repatriation of the canvas along with compensation.
Since the end of WWII, this Nazi-looted painting has been often and discreetly exchanged, bought and sold in and through New York, alleges the legal filing.
Family's Flight
The Sterns escaped from Munich to California in the late 1930s with their offspring due to the oppressive Nazi regime. However, they were prevented from taking the painting, which was created by the renowned Dutch in 1889.
Prior to their departure, the regime designated the masterpiece as German cultural property and banned the Sterns from taking it abroad. Once approved from a Nazi official, a agent appointed by the authorities sold the artwork on the Sterns' behalf. Yet, the proceeds from the sale were held in a blocked account, which the authorities later confiscated.
Later Transactions
By 1948, or shortly after, the painting arrived in the United States and was acquired by a prominent figure, a member of the Astor family. Subsequently, it was transferred through a art dealer to the museum, which then sold it to wealthy Greek businessman the magnate and his wife, Elise, in the early 1970s.
Basil and Elise set up the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation in the late 1970s, which operates a museum in the Greek capital where the masterpiece is currently shown.
Legal Arguments
The foundation and a surviving nephew of Basil Goulandris are identified in the suit. The filing states that the family and its related entities have hidden and obscured the painting's ownership and location from the family.
Even now, the Goulandris Defendants continue to conceal how and when the institution came into control of the artwork; the couple's ownership of the Painting from several years; and the facts that the regime looted the canvas from the family, pressured the couple into parting with it via a regime representative, and confiscated the funds of the sale.
Prior Cases
The descendants submitted a similar complaint in California in recently, but it was dismissed in the following years. An further action was also denied in spring 2025.
The Met's Position
The complaint argues that the Met's purchase of the painting was approved by a curator, the museum's curator of Old Masters and a leading authority on Nazi art looting. The institution and its expert knew or should have known that the artwork had almost certainly been seized by Nazis.
The museum responded that it is committed to its historical dedication to resolve Nazi-era claims.
An official remarked: Never during The Met's ownership of the painting was there any record that it had earlier been possessed to the Stern family – in fact, that information did not become accessible until several decades after the masterpiece left the Museum's collection.
The museum's disposal of the Van Gogh met the Met's guidelines for removal from collection – namely, it was noted that the work was deemed to be of lower caliber than other pieces of the same type in the collection. Even though the museum maintains its view that this work entered the holdings and was removed properly and well within all guidelines and policies, the institution invites and will examine any additional details that is discovered.
Goulandris Statement
A lawyer on behalf of the Goulandris Foundation said: The Goulandris Foundation is a highly prestigious organization in Athens. The action to take legal action against the institution and the family in the United States upon misleadingly incomplete allegations was previously dismissed, multiple times. We are convinced it will be a third time.
