Museum report·New York
New York Panel and Exhibition Put Ordinary Objects at the Heart of Nazi-Looted Art Restitution
A panel and exhibition at New York's Central Synagogue examined the restitution of Nazi-looted art through everyday objects, from a Torah scroll to a Rothschild desk, and the legal reforms now shaping claims by survivors' families.
On 19 October, the Central Synagogue in New York hosted a panel of provenance experts and lawyers on recovering art and cultural objects taken during the Holocaust, alongside an exhibition tracing six looted items. The show, which runs from 23 October 2026 to 22 January 2027, looks beyond high-value paintings to furniture, Judaica and Torah scrolls whose family significance is often overlooked.
Among the objects is a Torah scroll from around 1800, one of 17 known scrolls linked to the Czech town of Lipnik nad Becvou, whose Jewish community the Nazis erased. Another is a 1628 painting by Dirck Hals and Dirck van Delen, sold in Amsterdam in 1941 after its owner Jacob Lierens was forced out of his company; it fetched 9,000 guilders, then 33,000 three weeks later from Hans Posse, Hitler's art agent. A secretaire from around 1780 with Sevres porcelain plaques, once owned by Mayer Amschel Rothschild, was seized after the annexation of Austria in 1938.
Panellists included lawyers Kate Aufses and Yael Weitz, curator Emily Selter and Joel Greenberg, founder of the non-profit Art Ashes. Greenberg estimated that property worth around 500 billion dollars was stolen from European Jews, with more than 100,000 paintings still missing and fewer than 200,000 survivors alive.
Much of the panel focused on the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 and the reform signed on 13 April 2026, which removed its end-of-2026 expiry date and barred courts from dismissing timely claims on delay or discretionary grounds. Panellists said museums and their associations had lobbied against the change, and some institutions had waited out the deadline before exhibiting or selling disputed works.
Cases included the Dutch government's return of around 200 Goudstikker paintings in 2006, a claim by Hedwig Stern's heirs over Van Gogh's Olive Picking at the Met, and a September 2026 Los Angeles lawsuit seeking seven watercolour portraits by Auschwitz survivor Dina Babbitt. The panel also heard of a Goudstikker painting found in Argentina in 2025 and returned by an Argentine court, a first for the country, and closed on a hopeful note, citing the reformed law and rising numbers of successful claims.
