The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is once again the subject of a lawsuit centering around a Vincent van Gogh painting that the institution sold to a Greek collector in 1972.
That work, titled Olive Picking (1889), was only held by the New York institution for 16 years, with the Met having bought it in 1956 for $125,000, according to the suit, which was first reported by the New York Times.
But the lawsuit claims the painting should have never entered the Met’s holdings in the first place, since the work allegedly once belonged to Hedwig and Frederick Stern, who could not take the work with them when they fled Nazi Germany.
The Sterns’ heirs are now suing the Met and the Athens-based Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, which is run by the namesake collector who bought the painting from the Met. Olive Picking is now on view there.
If the lawsuit sounds familiar, that’s because its allegations have been fielded previously by the Stern heirs, who sued the Met and the Goulandris ...
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