Tuesday, April 07, 2015

Klimt's The Lady in Gold and the Battle over the Painting's Ownership

Maria Altman had to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to recover the painting of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, 'lost' in Hitler's Third Reich. You can read the decision which held that Austria could not benefit from the doctrine of sovereign immunity and so could be sued by Altman here.
The story has just been made into a movie Woman in Gold. You can hear Nina Totenberg, NPR’s legal correspondent, tell Altman’s story and talk about Totenberg’s interview with her a decade ago here. A book by journalist Anne-Marie O’Connor, The Lady in Gold, also tells the tale. 7 min 25 sec, transcript available.