Adele’s New Home

Conventional wisdom these days says that art unfairly looted by invading armies (especially Nazis) should be returned to its rightful owner and country of origin, no matter the consequences. So it was that Gustav Klimt’s famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was removed from Austria’s National Gallery and returned to the model’s heirs last year. Rather than keep the painting, however, the family promptly took it to auction, where it sold for a record $135 million. Now, one of the most famous paintings in the world is hanging in a New York businessman’s Fifth Avenue gallery, 4000 miles from its Austrian home.