Displaying items by tag: world jewish congress

Cosmetics heir and museum patron Ronald Lauder has enlisted the  Washington, D.C. lobbying firm American Continental Group (ACG) to assist in his campaign to get museums to return Nazi-looted art to the heirs of its original owners, reports O'Dwyer's, based on a public filing.

Lauder is the president of the World Jewish Congress and the founder of New York's Neue Galerie.

The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, urged a leading Spanish museum to return a painting that the Nazis stole from a Jewish art collector.

Lauder, in a statement issued on Friday, called on the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, which is owned by the Spanish state, to stop its legal fight to keep the Impressionist masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie,” which the Nazis stole from Lilly Cassirer, a German Jew seeking to flee her homeland in 1939.

The painting was purchased from the painter Camille Pissarro by Lilly Cassirer’s father-in-law, Julius. Her late grandson, Claude, sued for restitution in 2005 in a claim he filed with the United States District Court for the Central District of California.