USA
Jewish family sues NYC’s Met Museum over ‘secretly trafficked’ Nazi-looted van Gogh
The oil painting, called ‘Olive Picking’, was left behind when the Stern family fled Germany in the 1930s
October 29, 2025 17:16
The oil painting, called ‘Olive Picking’, was left behind when the Stern family fled Germany in the 1930s
October 29, 2025 17:16The descendants of a Jewish couple are suing the world-famous Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York over a van Gogh painting the couple said they had to leave behind when they fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The oil painting, called Olive Picking, was painted by the Dutch Post-Impressionist in 1889 a year before his death, and was bought by Hedwig and Frederick Stern in 1935.
When the Sterns fled the country for the US with their six children the following year, the painting remained in their Munich home.
It was sold in Germany in 1938 on the family’s behalf, but the proceeds were forfeited to the Nazis, according to the a lawsuit filed on Monday in a Manhattan federal court.
The work ended up in the US after the war, was sold to the Met through a gallery and was then sold on to a Greek shipping magnate, Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise, according to the suit.
It is currently on display on display at an Athens museum operated by a foundation the Greek couple created.
Lawyers for the Stern heirs said: “In the decades since the end of the Second World War, this Nazi-looted painting has been repeatedly and secretly trafficked, purchased and sold in and through New York.”
The lawsuit claims that the Met should have done more to track the painting’s provenance before its purchase, and states that the transaction was overseen by Theodore Rousseau Jr, who was not only the museum’s curator of European paintings but also an expert on art looted by the Nazis.
“Rousseau and the Met knew or should have known that the painting had probably been looted by Nazis,” the lawyers stated.
“Rousseau took no action to assure himself or the Met of anything about the painting’s transfers from or within Germany during the war.”
The Met said in a statement it released in 2022, when descendants of the Sterns previously sued, that during the museum’s ownership of the painting there had been no record that it had previously belonged to the Stern family. It added: “that information did not become available until several decades after the painting left the museum’s collection.”
The Goulandris Foundation was contacted for comment.
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