Fighting for Art Justice

Lawyer Howard Spiegler helps clients reclaim stolen works of art

26 July 2010

Howard Spiegler's New York law firm has helped clients and countries recover stolen hundreds of artworks and antiquities.

Howard Spiegler fights for art justice. He graduated from Columbia University's law school in 1974 with the hope of doing public good.

"If someone had told me in law school, even, that I have a crystal ball and I see in your future that you're an art lawyer, I probably would've said, 'What in the world is an art lawyer?'"

Because there weren't any. Spiegler was among a handful of people who helped create the field.

In their first case, representing the East German government, the lawyers recovered several portraits owned by one of the country's museums.

During World War II, government officials had hidden the art in a German castle. Occupying American soldiers pilfered it at the end of the war and sold the paintings in the U.S. The firm's victory marked the first time that a foreign country had successfully sued in the U.S. to recover cultural property.

Egon Schiele, Portrait of Wally Neuzil, 1912, Oil on wood, 32,7 x 39,8 cm, Inv_Nr453, Leopold Museum, Vienna

Nazi-looted art

About a dozen years ago, Spiegler started working on cases involving Nazi-looted art.

"I think his legacy is just to set a higher standard and remind the art market and museum world that it's accountable," says historian Marc Masurovsky, co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, "to accept the fact that many items have come in without clear provenance and are clearly acts of theft."