Norton Museum California Sued over Paintings Looted by Nazis
The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California, is facing a lawsuit to recover a pair of Renaissance paintings stolen by the Nazis when the Jewish owners fled the Netherlands in 1940.
The suit was filed Monday in Los Angeles to recover the diptych Adam and Eve painted around 1530 by Lucas Cranach the Elder according to Courthouse News Service.
Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent art dealer in the Netherlands at the time, owned the diptych when he was forced to leave the country with his wife and child. Hermann Göring, Adolf Hitler’s second-in-command, seized most of his collection. Marei von Saher, the sole surviving heir of Goudstikker, sued the museum in 2007, but ultimately, the Court of Appeals ended up siding with the museum.
In the wake of a 2024 California law giving state residents a two-year window to sue for the return of art works lost through political persecution, Saher assigned the Jewish Federation Los Angeles (formerly known as the Jewish Federation-Council of Greater Los Angeles) the rights to sue over the paintings.
The Jewish Federation Los Angeles said it filed the suit to “reverse a great injustice” and secure resources to help poor Holocaust survivors in the Greater Los Angeles area.
Main Image: Norton Museum of Art