This is a brief excerpt from the document you requested from IFAR’s Art Law & Cultural Property Database.
Case Summary
Konowaloff v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Konowaloff v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, No. 1:10-cv-09126 (S.D.N.Y. 2011); aff’d, 702 F.3d 140 (2d Cir. 2012).
Précis
In 2010, Pierre Konowaloff, the heir of Russian art collector Ivan Morozov, sued the Metropolitan Museum of Art, seeking the return of a Cézanne painting formerly in the Morozov collection. The painting had been nationalized by the Bolshevik Government in 1918 and later purchased by an American art collector, who bequeathed it to the Museum. This lawsuit, as well as a related suit (see Yale University v. Konowaloff), raises issues of the Act of State Doctrine as it relates to the expropriation of cultural property outside the United States.
Associated Legal Decision(s)
Click here to subscribe to IFAR's Art Law & Cultural Property Database to access this and other documents about U.S. and international legislation and case law concerning the acquisition, authenticity, export, ownership, and copyright of art objects.
