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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Yale sues to protect its Van Gogh
The gas ceiling lamps are classically blurry Van Gogh orbs. The patrons, slumped over their tables, are equally hazy-headed from drink and the late hour. But there is nothing fuzzy, Yale says, about the ownership of The Night Cafe, which has hung in the Yale University Art Gallery since 1961. To prove it, the university has filed a federal lawsuit (PDF) seeking to pre-empt a claim by a French citizen who says Russian revolutionaries stole the painting from his great-grandfather. Van Gogh made his oil painting of derelicts and prostitutes in 1888, at an all-night bar in the city of Arles, France. By the early twentieth century, it had found its way into the collection of Russian industrialist Ivan Morozov. In 1918, the new Bolshevik government nationalized Morozov's property, including The Night Cafe. The Soviets sold the painting. It passed through a series of galleries until the 1930s, when American art collector Stephen Carlton Clark '03 bought it. Clark -- a World War I veteran, Museum of Modern Art patron, and founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame -- bequeathed the Van Gogh to Yale on his death in 1960. Now comes Pierre Konowaloff of France, challenging the university's title to the painting. Last year, Konowaloff's wife wrote to Yale, saying that her husband is Morozov's great-grandson and the rightful owner of The Night Cafe. Although Konowaloff has yet to file suit, Yale took the first step in court because "the university does not wish to have its title to [the painting] clouded," according to Yale spokesman Tom Conroy, who declined further comment. A university statement on the matter summarizes the arguments in the complaint. The Bolsheviks had no right to take Morozov's art collection, argues Konowaloff's attorney, Allan Gerson '76JSD. Therefore, the whole chain of possession is illegitimate, he says. Gerson, a former official in the Reagan-era State and Justice departments, gained fame by suing the Libyan government for its role in blowing up an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. His Night Cafe argument, he says in an interview, is "essentially the same argument I had advanced successfully in Pan Am Flight 103, which is that international law has evolved to the point that governments can be held accountable for their actions." While Yale is not a government, he says, "Yale is the conduit, or the fence, for Russia. Russia stole it; Yale has profited from it." Nonsense, Yale contends in its suit, filed March 23 in federal court in Connecticut. "The implication of [Konowaloff's] argument," the suit says, "is that American courts should try to undo the entire program of property reform undertaken by the Russian government in the early part of the twentieth century, invalidating the transfers of title of Russian citizens' property that Russia effectuated within its own borders." Russia sold many such nationalized works of art to major galleries around the world, the suit points out. "It was accepted at the time, as it is now, that the sales by the Soviet government were valid, as were later acquisitions of the paintings." Konowaloff's father sued Russian and French museums in French court in 1993, trying to recover some Matisse paintings, the Yale suit says; he lost. The university's suit also rejects Gerson's contention that his client's wife wrote to Yale about the painting "as soon as she knew that Yale had it." Calling The Night Cafe "one of the most renowned paintings in the world," the suit devotes four pages to listing books and articles that reproduce it -- with credit to Yale and Clark. Konowaloff "knew or should have known" that Yale owned it, the suit argues, adding that his claim, coming nearly five decades late, underscores the purpose of statutes of limitations: "weeding out stale claims and punishing non-diligent claimants for sleeping on their putative rights." The suit seeks a permanent injunction barring Konowaloff from pursuing his claim. The statute of limitations poses "no problem from our point of view," Gerson responds. Konowaloff's claim, he says, is "related to war crimes. There's no statute of limitations for war crimes. There's no statute of limitations for theft either." He says he'll file a counterclaim by May 23. |
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