Dive Brief:
- Yale University has won a federal lawsuit over a Van Gogh painting it has displayed for 50 years.
- The great-grandson of a Russian industrialist had claimed he was the rightful owner of the artwork because it was wrongly confiscated from his family during the Communist revolution and later sold by the Soviet government.
- The famous 1888 painting, “The Night Café,” shows a few customers seated in a nearly empty café. According to the great-grandson, it is worth between $120 million and $150 million.
Dive Insight:
Yale had sued in 2009 to block Pierre Konowaloff from claiming the painting, and a federal judge has granted Yale’s request. The judge, Judge Alvin Thompson, agreed with the argument that U.S. courts don’t examine whether foreign government expropriations are valid. Yale had received the painting from an alumnus who bought it from a New York City gallery in the 1930s. Konowaloff called the acquisition “art laundering.”