The case of the Kandinsky painting and Bayes' theorem

UPDATE (27 August 2021). I'm not sure what role my testimony played in this if any, but the Municipality has now ruled that the Stedelijk Museum must return the Kandinsky painting to the Lewenstein family heirs 

  

Original posting dated 5 Dec 2018

During World War 2 many thousands of pieces of valuable artwork were stolen from Jewish families by the Nazis and their collaborators in countries they occupied. The 2015 film The Woman in Gold (with Helen Mirren) told the story of one such painting by Klimt and the family's long fight to regain ownership. There have been many similar stories and the latest one concerns the "Painting with Houses" (Bild mit Hausern) by Wassily Kandinsky as described in today's article in the Guardian and in this New York Times article. I have become personally involved in this case as an expert consultant - on Bayes' theorem, not art.

"Painting with Houses" (Bild mit Hausern) by Wassily Kandinsk (1909)

The painting is in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, but before the war it was owned by the Lewenstein family of Amsterdam having been bought by Emanuel Lewenstein who was an art collector.  For works like this of “possibly problematic provenance” in Holland, there is a Dutch Restitution Committee (DRC) that is empowered to make binding decisions about ownership.  In October 2018 the DRC surprisingly determined that it was 'not obliged to restitute the painting' to the Lewenstein family.

James Palmer of Mondex Corporation (Canada), who represents the Lewenstein heirs, believes that the ruling was both logically and probabilistically flawed and that it was designed, from the very beginning, to refuse to restitute the painting to the Lewenstein family. Knowing that Bayes theorem could be used where only subjective probabilities were available, James contacted me to provide an analysis of the DRC decision. Here is my short report. I used a causal Bayesian network model to determine that the DRC argument is extremely unlikely to be valid. Specifically, with very basic assumptions that I suspect will turn out to be favourable to the DRC, the probability that their claim is 'true' is about 3%.  Hence, the decision unfairly robs the Lewenstein heirs of what is rightfully theirs. My involvement in the case is described in an article in the leading Dutch newspaper NRC:

From the article about the case in the Dutch newspaper NRC

Fenton, N. E. "The case of the Kandinsky painting and Bayes' theorem", Nov 2018, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29551.48804

See also 

• Guardian:Dutch art panel's ruling against Jewish family criticised as 'step back'
• NYT: In a Netherlands Museum Director, the Nazis Found an Ally
• The DRC Decision 
• Schande dat deze roofkunst in het museum mag blijven hangenn  (version with English translation is here)