Heirs of Nazi-Persecuted Collector Sue to Void Sotheby's Pissarro Sale

Descendants of Jewish collector Salomon Flavian have asked a Paris court to annul Sotheby's London sale of a 1902 Camille Pissarro painting, which they say was looted by the Nazis, The Art Newspaper reports.

The work, titled Darse de pêche et bassin Duquesne (Fishing Dock and Duquesne Basin), sold at Sotheby's in London on June 25, 2024. The case around it has grown tangled. Sotheby's asserted that two other Flavian relatives — not among the plaintiffs — had previously signed away their ownership claim through the Toronto-based Mondex Corporation, which represented them.

Family members who had signed no settlement permitting the sale learned about it only afterwards. Mondex, meanwhile, has claimed in court that the painting was never looted by the Nazis. The report does not explain why, in that case, Mondex would have brokered a financial settlement with two of Flavian's heirs before the sale — a step that would suggest the heirs held some legal claim to the work as Nazi-looted property.

Even the venue is disputed. Sotheby's lawyers argued the case should not be heard in Paris at all, since the sale took place in London and the parties involved have "no relationship with France."

A first for the Philippines

At 77, Filipina artist Imelda Cajipe Endaya has become the first woman to receive the Order of National Artists of the Philippines for Visual Arts, an honor established in 1972, ArtAsiaPacific reports. Through paintings, prints and installations, Endaya's work examines social struggles in her native Philippines, from gender and labor inequality to migration and globalization.

"People say I have just broken a glass ceiling. There should be more successful women artists after me," Endaya said in a statement.

The Digest

German culture minister Wolfram Weimer said a federal plan to fund Berlin's arts scene with €2.9 billion ($3.3 billion) over the next decade should not become "the financier of a cultural policy that threatens to systematically exclude Jewish artists," and warned that subsidies could be withdrawn. [dpa]

A new coalition of artists, writers, designers and other creatives in the Philippines is protesting the planned construction of a US-led Pax Silica AI manufacturing hub. [ArtAsiaPacific]

In the wake of shuttered San Francisco art schools, independent initiatives — often run by artists — are stepping in. This summer's free Present Company "experiment in arts education" ran at the Headlands Center for the Arts in West Marin, and the Mission District's Southern Exposure nonprofit has launched new education programs that are free and pay stipends to participants. [San Francisco Examiner]

Hundreds of arts and culture workers protested earlier this week against the Colombian government's plan to cut its cultural budget by 30 percent. [The Art Newspaper]

The Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland has unveiled three new buildings — a museum building, a gallery, a cultural space and an office building — plus roughly 108,000 square feet of new gardens and landscapes, all designed by Atelier Peter Zumthor. [Artforum]

The Kicker

Paris welcomes a new art center next month: Le Large, on Île Seguin, an island on the Seine just outside the city whose history of failed real estate and cultural ventures has earned it the nickname "cursed island," Le Monde writes. The island hosted Renault's car-making headquarters until 1992 and has struggled since. Collector François Pinault's abandoned museum plan is only one in a long string of projects that never materialized.

Le Large's founder, collector and real estate developer Laurent Dumas, took the curse seriously enough to bring in a Native American leader, then a shaman, then a voodoo priest healer to chase away lingering evil spirits. "I'm extremely sensitive to spirit forces," he told Le Monde. When Le Large opens on October 17 with its debut exhibition "Moteur imaginare," curated by Cecilia Alemani, we may have a sense of whether it worked.