The Art Institute of Chicago has taken the right step with its decision to hire a director to oversee provenance research of the museum's multitude of art and artifacts.
We hope the hiring will help clear up the museum's contested ownership of a drawing by Austrian impressionist Egon Schiele that the Manhattan district attorney says was stolen decades ago by the Nazis.
The Sun-Times reported Monday that the institution appointed Jacques Schuhmacher as its first executive director of provenance research.
Schuhmacher and his four-person team are charged with correctly figuring out the line of previous ownership of items within the museum's holdings.
And that's ever more important as museums across the globe are being sued or otherwise challenged for having art that was stolen by Nazis during World War II, or looted from places such as Native American burial sites.
Earlier this year, Fowler Museum at UCLA returned to Ghana seven royal artifacts that were stolen from the African country by the British 150 years ago.
The Denver Art Museum in 2022 sent back to Cambodia four important pieces that had been looted from the country and sold to the institution through an unscrupulous art dealer, who later died.
Last February, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed a lawsuit against the Art Institute, claiming a drawing held by the museum, “Russian War Prisoner” by Austrian artist Egon Schiele, had been stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish cabaret star during the Holocaust.
Schiele's work has been of interest to Bragg. His office has returned 11 Nazi-looted Schiele works to their rightful heirs. Some were in the hands of private collectors, but others were found in museums by Bragg's office, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library — both in New York City; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California; the Allen Museum of Art at Oberlin College; and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
The Chicago Schiele drawing has been seized in place at the Art Institute while the case progresses. The Art Institute said the allegations are "unsupported and wrong."
Art Institute President James Rondeau said there is now "much broader awareness of these issues" of provenance.
"There is much more intensive public scrutiny, and, obviously, there is more intensive legal scrutiny," he said. "But this work occupies not just the legal zones but the ethical and moral zones of ownership."
The museum-going public deserves to know that the artwork and artifacts they are visiting were rightfully obtained.
At the Art Institute, Schuhmacher and his group have a duty to make sure that's the case.
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