Meyer v. the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma et al.

The daughter and heir of Raoul Meyer, a well-known French businessman and collector of impressionist paintings prior to WWII, has filed suit in Federal Court in New York to recover La Bergère by Camille Pissarro, one of the most prominent artworks in the permanent collection of the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Museum. Raoul Meyer’s art collection, including La Bergère, was seized by Nazi Occupation forces in France and the Vichy Regime, a war-time ally of Nazi Germany. In 1956, Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer purchased the painting from the David Findley Gallery in New York and in 2000 the Weitzenhoffer estate made a significant bequest to the Fred Jones Museum, which included La Bergère. The claimant, Léone Meyer, argues that both the David Findley Gallery and the Fred Jones Museum failed to investigate La Bergère’s prior title and its provenance which was readily available using only minimal due diligence. The list of defendants was then extended in the amended complaint filed on 10 January 2014 to include both the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), which raised interesting questions surrounding the liability of cultural property crediting and membership organizations. Meyer claims that the AAM violated certain terms of the accreditation agreement with the Fred Jones Museum contained in the “AAM Standards Regarding the Unlawful Appropriation of Objects During the Nazi Era” upon obtaining La Bergère. The Museum’s membership agreement with AAMD violated the AAMD Code of Ethics (please visit our ethics page). In the motion to dismiss the action dated 7 February 2014, the defendants counter-argue that privately drafted guidelines “do not create enforceable law from which a party may bring a course of action”. If the Court is inclined to hear oral argument, as the defendants believe may be helpful to the Court, a hearing date will be set. In the press, Léone Meyer wrote an open letter to the People of Oklahoma on 11 February 2014, followed the next day by a statement in The Oklahoma Daily from the University of Oklahoma President, David Boren: “[The return of the painting would] set a bad precedent for the university and would not be fair to the painting’s donors, Aaron and Clara Weitzenhoffer”.