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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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Counterclaim in Night Cafe lawsuit Now on tap in The Night Cafe: a bar brawl -- of the legal variety -- over ownership of one of the world's most famous paintings. The 1888 Van Gogh has hung in the Yale University Art Gallery for nearly 50 years. In April Yale filed suit in federal court, seeking to pre-empt a claim by the grandson of the painting's former owner. Now the grandson, Paris resident Pierre Konawaloff, has served up his own round of litigation with a counterclaim [PDF] asking for title to the painting and money damages. The allegations in the counterclaim -- filed in U.S. District Court in Connecticut on May 21 -- are colorful enough to match the drunkards and prostitutes in The Night Cafe. Konowaloff contends that Bolsheviks looted the painting from his grandfather, Ivan Morozov, in 1918; that a prominent Yale alumnus bought it via "fraudulent concealment" in the 1930s; and that Yale practiced "willful ignorance" in accepting its bequeathal in 1960. Vladimir Lenin's Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic confiscated the painting "in clear violation of international law," Konowaloff's court filing says. "Any subsequent purchaser of the painting was aware, or reasonably should have been aware, that the painting had been illegally confiscated and that therefore good title could not be passed through a sale." In other words, according to the counterclaim, what Yale calls an act of Soviet nationalization "was simply an act of theft." Yale acknowledges that the Bolshevik government seized the painting as part of its Communist revolution. That doesn't make the confiscation illegal, argues Jonathan Freiman '98JD, one of the university's lawyers on the case. "At the time this painting was nationalized, there were no international rules about how a country could treat property," Freiman says. "As we know, countries were experimenting with all sorts of different economic systems. The notion that in fact, international law required all nations to have one economic system -- capitalism -- is wrong, as a matter of history and a matter of law." "I think they're 100 percent wrong," retorts Konowaloff's lawyer, Allan Gerson '76JSD. "By 1907, Russia was party to the Hague Conventions, which govern what can be done with cultural property at a time of war. We also argue that if it wasn't the war, [if] it was peacetime, international law also puts limits on confiscation of cultural property. At the very least, there has to be compensation." Konowaloff also disputes Yale's account of how Stephen Carlton Clark, Class of 1903, acquired The Night Cafe in 1933. The university says he bought it from a New York gallery, which in turn bought it from a European gallery. In fact, Konowaloff's court papers argue, Clark asked the New York gallery to acquire it for him "secretly" so that its rightful Russian owners wouldn't know its whereabouts. The New York gallery bought the painting from a German gallery that was notorious for laundering looted art, Konowaloff contends. Close to 30 years later, Clark bequeathed The Night Cafe to his alma mater. "As an institution of higher learning of worldwide renown, Yale knew, or had reason to suspect, that its bequest from Clark involved looted art," the counterclaim says. "Yale, however, did not examine whether there were any potential claims of ownership to the painting." Freiman responds that Clark made no secret of his ownership of the Van Gogh, frequently lending it for public exhibition with his name attached. "It's not like he put it in an attic and locked the door." As for the details of what Clark and Yale each knew when they acquired the painting, "If you've waited 90 years to bring a lawsuit, you can't ask people what happened. That's why the law requires people to bring their claims in a timely manner." Gerson denies that the statute of limitations applies in this case. One point on which Gerson and Freiman agree: there's apparently no precedent for a court ordering the return of Bolshevik-confiscated art. "It's unusual that this claim is being raised at this late date, but they were quite common in the 1920s and '30s," says Sean McMeekin, a Yale postdoctoral associate and author of History's Greatest Heist: The Looting of Russia by the Bolsheviks. The premise of McMeekin's book is clear from its title. And the "heist," he says, funded one of the world's most brutal regimes. "Stalin's sprawlingly murderous collective farms, steel plants, and tank factories" he writes, "were substantially funded by art and antique sales to Western collectors." In a phone interview from Turkey, where he teaches international relations at Bilkent University, McMeekin says: "I have great sympathy for anyone whose ancestors lost property at the hands of the Bolsheviks." Yet he sees little merit in Konowaloff's claim against Yale. "To make a distinction between a painting that was quote-unquote stolen and a painting that was nationalized -- I'm not sure there's really a difference there," he says. Yale has no legal liability and "no personal responsibility for what happened to this man's grandfather. I myself would love it if someone could make some kind of gesture of contrition for all the people who lost their lives and their property to the Bolshevik revolution. But if this case were adjudicated and [Yale] lost, it would open the floodgates to a whole lot of litigation, probably much of it frivolous." Yale's legal response is due June
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