LAWSUIT PUTS LACMA SHOW IN DOUBT

In a legal challenge that aims to block an upcoming show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the grandson of a Russian aristocrat is arguing that twenty-five artworks in the exhibition—including paintings by Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Picasso, and van Gogh—are stolen goods, looted from his family by Lenin’s Bolshevik government in 1918 and later passed to Moscow’s State Pushkin Museum. In the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Reynolds reports that the suit, filed Tuesday in US District Court in Los Angeles, argues that the works should be removed from the LACMA exhibition “Old Masters, Impressionists, and Moderns: French Masterworks From the State Pushkin Museum, Moscow,” which is scheduled to open July 27. The suit also contends that the museum owes compensation for damages.