The Times had an article yesterday on Page 1, under the heading "About New York," by Dan Barry. The headline of the article is "A Collector was Someone Else and Art was Someone Else's." It is the second shoe to drop on this matter in the last few weeks. A man known as William M. V. Kingsland, who worked in antique shops, gave interesting walking tours of NYC, and had friends who thought he was a great wit, cheapskate, eccentric, and scion of a wealthy American family died several months ago without a will. He lived in a small apartment on 72d Street filled with treasures and dust. Few of his friends had ever been there. Because of the lack of a will or relatives, the estate fell under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Public Administrator.
The first thing the Administrator found out is that the deceased's real name was Melvin Kohn, and that he was not related to any of the families he had led friends to believe he was. The Adminstrator ascertained that the estate included some good stuff, (inter alia, a bust by Giacometti, paintings by Schwitters, J. S. Copley, Redon, Fairfield Porter and others), so he called in Christie's to deal with the cream and Stair Galleries for the milk. Christie's discovered in its research that some of the items had been stolen in the 1960s, and referred the case to the FBI. Stair went forward with a sale at which the Copley was purchased by a dealer for the bargain price of $85,000. He thought he could make a profit of $400,000 on it, but his research led him to conclude that the painting had been stolen in the 1960s from Harvard University. So he called the FBI too, and Stair has called off further sales. There is some pussyfooting around whether Kingsland/Kohn stole these things, acquired them knowingly from a thief at once or from thieves over time, or acquired them innocently in the course of his collecting (given that the guy is dead and has no relatives, one wonders why there is any reluctance at all to risk defaming him; it gets done to the living, with repercussions for their families every day). Kingsland/Kohn was, it says in the article either 58 or 62 at his death, which makes it not impossible that he could have stolen things 40 years ago. I suspect there are one or more shoes still to drop in this matter.
Ed Pollack