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Swiss Museum to Accept Artwork from Nazi Hoarder

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The Kunstmuseum in Bern, Switzerland, is poised to accept Cornelius Gurlitt’s collection, people close to the matter say.

Published reports have revealed that the sole heir of reclusive Nazi art collector Cornelius Hurlitt is a Swiss museum. Last Wednesday it was announced that the Berne Art Museum will decide of November 26th whether to accept the roughly 1000 artworks in Gurlitt’s sizable collection, which includes valuable works that the Nazis confiscated from Jewish homes during World War II.

In May of this year, Gurlitt died at his Munich apartment at age 81, after a long battle with heart disease.  He had clandestinely stored hundreds of works including those by such legendary artists as Chagall and Picasso at his apartment and a house in nearby Salzburg, Austria.  The Wall Street Journal reported that his health deteriorated after government officials confiscated his collection in early 2012 as part of a tax investigation. The entire collection is estimated to be work $1.26 billion and contains a number of works illegally seized by the Nazis.

“It seemed the appropriate time to decide because that’s when roughly 14 board members are planning on meeting anyway,” said Kunstmuseum Bern spokeswoman Ruth Gilgen. The board of trustees will review a report put together by the museum’s Zurich-based lawyer Beat von Rechenberg, who since July has been analyzing legal impediments to acquiring the collection, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The Bern Art Museum will accept the bequest, but only pieces for which restitution claims can be ruled out will come to Bern, the Sonntagszeitung reported.  “According to well informed sources, the meeting of the museum’s board of trustees on November 26 will just sign off on the already detailed agreement,” the paper wrote.

The Wall Street Journal reported that von Rechenberg has been in communication with Christopher Marinello, a lawyer representing the heirs to the collection’s most famous work, a portrait of a seated woman by Henri Matisse that dealers estimate could fetch $20 million at auction.

Earlier this year, according to a WSJ report, a German government-appointed task force determined that Gurlitt’s collection included such works that had been looted from their Jewish owners by the Nazis, including the Matisse and Max Liebermann’s “Two Riders on the Beach,” which could eclipse the artist’s $3.4 million auction record set at Sotheby’s in 2006.

According to terms that Gurlitt agreed to prior to his death, these and other looted works would have to be returned to the heirs of their original owners from whom they were confiscated. The remaining prices in his collection, by artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Albrecht Dürer, would become property of the Kunstmuseum Bern, according to a WSJ report.

The inheritance represents a windfall in both acquisitions and research potential for the museum, which pales in prestige within the art world to such Swiss institutions as the Fondation Beyeler and the Kunsthaus Zürich, the report indicated

A spokeswoman for the museum said it was still in talks with Germany and the German state of Bavaria, and that “current speculation” about the collection was to a significant extent inaccurate.

“The talks are proceeding constructively, but are not yet concluded,” she said. “In light of this, it is unnecessary to comment on the speculation, which is in significant parts incorrect.”

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