LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - From a leading Paris gallery to the hands of Nazi looters to a U.S. art museum and finally to the Las Vegas Strip -- a 1928 painting by Henri Matisse, ''Odalisque,'' has made a controversial journey. The Bellagio casino resort, flagship of Mirage Resorts Inc. (NYSE:MIR - news), has quietly added the vivid red-and-blue oil painting, valued at $2 million, to its Las Vegas Strip art gallery, resort officials said Tuesday. Mirage chief executive Steve Wynn, who has developed a sizable art collection, bought the painting from the family of the late Paris art gallery owner Paul Rosenberg shortly after it was returned to the family after hanging for years in the Seattle Art Museum. In June, the Seattle Art Museum returned the masterpiece to the Roswenberg family after the family claimed in federal court that the painting was one of hundreds of masterpieces stolen from the dealer by the Nazis. ``Clearly there is nothing improper in having had a commodity returned to a rightful owner to lawfully do with it as they see fit,'' said Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress. ``I certainly congratulate Mr. Wynn on his good taste.'' Steinberg added, ``From a personal point of view I don't know if the Rosenberg heirs have given thought of making a contribution to benefit Holocaust survivors but that is for them to consider.'' Elaine Rosenberg, the daughter-in-law of Paul Rosenberg's son, refused to comment on the sale Tuesday. At the time the Seattle museum returned the painting, she was quoted as thanking the museum for the return of one of her father-in-law's ''children.'' The 18-by-22 inch (45.7 cm by 55.9 cm) painting, also known as ``Oriental Woman Seated on a Floor,'' joins some 40 other impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the Bellagio's gallery which opened with the property last October and marked the first time a Las Vegas resort placed such great emphasis on high culture. Other paintings in the gallery include works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Georges Seurat. Before World War II, Rosenberg ran one of the top art galleries in Paris -- selling works by Monet, Degas, Cezanne and Picasso. He was also Picasso's dealer. The Matisse was stolen from Rosenberg by Nazis who had targeted him, Steinberg said. In 1954, the piece was purchased by Seattle lumber barons Virginia and Prentice Bloedel for $19,000 from New York's Knoedler & Co. art gallery. In 1991, the Bloedels donated it to the Seattle museum. Steinberg said there have been several examples recently of works of art taken from museum walls to be returned to the families of their rightful owners. The French government, under pressure, agreed to return a Monet this summer to the Rosenberg family after it was determined to have belonged to them. In June, the National Gallery of Berlin agreed to return a van Gogh drawing worth about $5 million to the heir of German collector Max Silberberg, who was forced to sell off hundreds of paintings and drawings for next to nothing before he and his wife were sent to Auschwitz. Over the last several weeks the heirs of the Austrian branch of the Rothschild family have sold several paintings at auction that were recently returned to them by the Austrian government, Steinberg said.
NEW YORK (AP) - The Brooklyn Museum of Art sued the city on Tuesday, seeking to stop the mayor from making good on his threat to freeze millions of dollars in funding because of an exhibit that includes a dung-decorated portrait of the Virgin Mary. The museum's Board of Trustees voted to proceed as planned with the exhibit that opens Saturday. They said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has no right to freeze funding because he didn't like the exhibit's content. ``Under the First Amendment, this museum may not be punished for offering to the public an entirely lawful exhibition,'' said Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer representing the museum. The lawsuit asked that the city be barred from punishing the museum - either by withholding its funding, replacing its leaders or seizing its building, as Giuliani had threatened. City Hall immediately criticized the board's action. ``We will be stopping funding to the museum starting tomorrow,'' said Deputy Mayor Joseph Lhota, the mayor's representative on the board. Giuliani had threatened to evict the museum from its city-owned home unless the board agreed to change the exhibition of British art, ``Sensation,'' which he has called ``sick'' and ``disgusting.'' He also has threatened to freeze at least $7 million in funding. Giuliani, who was in Washington Tuesday, said he planned to remove the museum's leadership. ``The lease tells us what we're required to do, which is to evict them and to stop dealing with them as a board,'' he said. ``Over a period of time there will be a substitute board put in place.'' Meanwhile, the leaders of two dozen city museums and cultural institutions - including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Bronx Zoo - warned Giuliani in a letter that his actions set ``a dangerous precedent.'' Many of the leaders who sent it - dependent themselves on city funds -had remained silent for a week as the mayor excoriated the Brooklyn Museum. Glenn Scott Wright, the London representative for artist Chris Ofili who created ``The Holy Virgin Mary'' painting - which is adorned with pornographic cutouts and a clump of elephant dung - called Giuliani's measures an infringement on free expression. ``Giuliani's denial of this basic right is both totalitarian and fascist, a reprisal of the Nazi regime's censorship of the contemporary art of its time which it labeled 'degenerate art,''' said Wright. The Virgin Mary painting was among a collection of Ofili's work that won Britain's prestigious Turner Prize for contemporary art. His works are in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.