A Jewish family has launched a new lawsuit against the Metropolitan Museum of Art, claiming that one of Vincent van Gogh’s celebrated paintings, Olive Picking, was looted by the Nazis and wrongfully sold before the museum acquired it.
The heirs of Fritz and Hedwig Stern, a Jewish couple from Munich who fled Nazi Germany in 1936, say the artwork was taken from them under duress and then passed through a series of questionable hands before ending up in the Met’s collection. The family insists that the sale of the painting was not voluntary but orchestrated by Nazi-appointed trustees who stripped the Sterns of both the artwork and the proceeds.
The painting, created by Van Gogh in 1889, was acquired by the Met in 1956 from the Astor estate. Sixteen years later, the museum sold it to Greek shipping magnate Basil Goulandris for $125,000. It now hangs in the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, accuses the Met and the Goulandris Foundation of concealing the painting’s dark history and profiting from a forced sale. The heirs say the museum knew or should have known that the painting had been stolen from a Jewish family fleeing Nazi persecution.
The Met argues that it followed proper procedures when it acquired and later sold the work, claiming there was no record linking the painting to the Stern family. The Goulandris Foundation has also denied wrongdoing, saying the claims have already been litigated and dismissed once before.
The Stern heirs, however, remain determined to reclaim what they view as a stolen piece of their family history. Their lawsuit seeks both the return of the Van Gogh and financial damages, reopening an unresolved question of how many Nazi-era looted artworks remain in the hands of the world’s most respected museums.
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