MoMA, Guggenheim Keep Picassos

The Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim worked out an agreement with a German art collector's heirs right before the case was headed to jury selection. This allow the MoMA to keep "Boy Leading a Horse" (1905-1906) and the Guggenheim "Le Moulin de la Galette” (1900; pictured). Bloomberg News reports, "Both paintings had been in the private collection of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish banker, who died in 1935. The plaintiffs claimed in the suit that the paintings were sold under duress and should be returned to the family." The family had argued the paintings' transfer to Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's second wife was not legal; the museums said they were a gift to her and that they acquired them properly. The settlement was not disclosed, but Judge Jed Rakoff, who allowed the case to move to trial, believes it should be out in the open, "The public surely would want to know now and forever which of those diametrically different views was true, and the great crucible of a trial would have made that known."