The Art Institute of Chicago has been granted an emergency stay by an appellate judge, pausing the restitution of Egon Schiele's drawing "Russian War Prisoner" (1916) to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer and art collector who died in a Nazi concentration camp. The museum is appealing a New York Supreme Court judge's April 23 order to surrender the artwork, which has been off view since September 2023 when it was seized by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. The museum disputes that the work was looted, citing evidence that Grünbaum's sister-in-law recovered the collection after the war and sold it to a dealer.
This case is part of a broader, decades-long legal battle over Grünbaum's collection of some 80 Schiele artworks, with varying outcomes across multiple lawsuits. The Art Institute's resistance contrasts with other institutions—including the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh—that have voluntarily returned Schiele works to the heirs. The outcome could set a significant precedent for how museums handle Nazi-looted art claims, especially when provenance documentation is contested.