Claim by Museums of Public Trusteeship and their Response to Restitution Claims: A Self-Serving Attempt to Keep Holocaust-Looted Art

When faced with demands for deaccessioning in the context of Holocaust-era art, many museums have maid the claim that legal or ethical responsabilities to the public make it difficult to restitute art. Museums base this claim on the premise that the art in their collection is held "in trust" for the public. Against the backdrop or this "public trust", museums often present technical defences such as the statute of limitations and laches, as a means of preventing Holocaust looted art cases from ever reaching the merits. Indeed, some museums have gone so far as to explain that, where a museum determines that a claim lacks merit, it is the museum's "fiduciary responsability" to raise such technical defences.