NEW YORK (AP) – A 12-year dispute that illustrated the difficulty of proving art was stolen by Nazis in World War II ended Tuesday with an agreement that a 1912 oil painting titled Portrait of Wally will be returned to a Vienna museum and displayed with an acknowledgement that it was stolen from a Jewish art dealer by a Nazi agent.

The settlement calls for the Leopold Museum to own the painting by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele after paying $19 million to the estate of Lea Bondi Jaray and allowing it to be displayed for three weeks at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan.

The painting has been the subject of court proceedings in New York City since it was lent 12 years ago to the Museum of Modern Art in New York by the Leopold Museum. At least three times, a judge had ordered it returned to Austria without acknowledgement it had been stolen.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that the settlement among the U.S. government, Jaray’s estate and the Leopold Museum “marks another small step toward justice for victims of property crimes during WWII.”

The deal comes less than a year after U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska rejected the Leopold Museum’s argument that the painting was not stolen property and days before she was to preside over a trial to decide whether the museum knew it was stolen property when it was brought into the United States in September 1997.

In January 1998, the Manhattan district attorney’s office began investigating claims that the painting was stolen more than a half century earlier when Jaray was forced to sell it on the cheap to a Nazi art collector.

After a state judge refused to let prosecutors seize the painting and an appeals court upheld the ruling, federal prosecutors obtained a federal seizure warrant from a magistrate judge, blocking its return.

The painting was among more than 100 paintings lent to MoMA by the Leopold Foundation for a three-month exhibit that ended Jan. 4, 1998. At the time, it was estimated that Portrait of Wally was worth about $2 million.

The Leopold Museum has always insisted that it acquired the painting in good faith from legitimate postwar owners.

Henry Bondi of Princeton, N.J., filed the claim that said the painting had been taken from his late aunt, a Viennese Jew, as she fled her home in 1939 to go to London when Germany annexed Austria. She died in 1969. Henry Bondi also has since died.

A lawyer for the Leopold Museum did not immediately return a telephone message for comment.

In a statement, representatives of the Bondi estate said the settlement reflects the true value of the painting.

They also said the public display of the painting at the Museum of Jewish Heritage will let visitors view it in a setting that memorializes the suffering of Holocaust victims and the resilience of those who escaped and survived.

“Justice has been served,” the statement said. “Finally, after more than 70 years, the wrongs suffered by Lea Bondi Jaray are at least being acknowledged and, to some degree, corrected.”

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BOSTON (AP) — Two Massachusetts men stole and tried to sell a customs form with the birth date, address and signature of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Thomas Chapman, 50, of Malden, and Paul Brickman, 50, of Chelsea, tried to sell online a customs declarations form filled out by Armstrong, who just had returned from a trip overseas designed to boost “morale and boost support” for troops serving abroad.

The complaint said Chapman was working at Boston’s Logan International Airport in Customs and Border Protection on March 13 when Armstrong passed through a checkpoint, and even helped Armstrong with his luggage to a connecting bus to New York.

But authorities said Chapman did not properly file a customs declarations form with the proper Department of Homeland Security officials. Instead, he and Brickman allegedly tried to sell the form using an auction company that operates a public Web site dedicated to the sale of historical documents and memorabilia.

Bidding for Armstrong’s form began in May with a starting bid of $200 and reached $1,026 before the auction company halted the bidding in response to concerns raised by a bidder, the complaint said.

Federal investigators recovered the Armstrong document shortly after the auction company removed it from its inventory.

Both men have been charged with stealing an official government record. It was not immediately clear if either had a lawyer.

If convicted, both men face up to 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.

A man who answered the phone under a listing for Chapman declined to comment and Brickman did not immediately return messages.

Armstrong, who lives in Indian Hill, Ohio, could not immediately be reached for comment.

Tuesday marked the 41th anniversary of Armstrong and fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin becoming the first men to walk on the moon after landing their lunar module.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — An auction house commissioned to sell Lucille Ball memorabilia says it is returning the actress’ lifetime achievement awards to her daughter.

Heritage Auction Galleries says a deal reached Saturday will return the awards to Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, Ball’s daughter with first husband Desi Arnaz.

A sale of dozens of other Ball-related memorabilia went forward on Saturday. Items up for bid included a Rolls Royce and love letters to second husband Gary Morton.

The deal announced Saturday ended a legal fight between Luckinbill and Susie Morton, who married Gary Morton after Ball’s death in 1989.

A judge agreed to stop the auction Friday but imposed a high bond Luckinbill couldn’t meet.

She has said the awards will be displayed in a museum honoring her mother.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Heirs of the late Lucille Ball and her second husband are sparring over the planned auction of some of the couple’s prized possessions, including a Rolls-Royce and some of the actress’ awards.

Other items on the auction block are photos, sketches, other personal items and love letters between Ball and Gary Morton, the comedienne’s second husband.

Morton and Ball were married until the comedienne’s death in 1989. He later remarried, and the items being offered in a July 17 auction were consigned to a Texas-based auction house by his widow, Susie Morton.

She is now locked in a battle with Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, the daughter of Ball and her first husband and I Love Lucy co-star, Desi Arnaz, who want some of the items and her mother’s awards returned.

Susie Morton sued Luckinbill on Monday to seek a judge’s ruling that the auction can proceed.

Luckinbill said Wednesday through her attorney, Ronald J. Palmieri, that if the items she requested are not returned, she will go to court Friday morning to try to stop the auction.

Luckinbill wants the return of seven love letters, Ball’s address book, some portraits and several lifetime achievement awards being offered for sale, Palmieri said.

“It is clear these are personal effects earned by a lifetime of work by someone of great stature in the entertainment community,” Palmieri said in a statement. “To demean their true nature, and prostitute their value in monetary terms, is insulting to Ms. Ball’s memory and contravenes her express desire that these items were to belong to her daughter after her death.”

Both Luckinbill and Susie Morton say Luckinbill was entitled to her mother’s personal effects as part of the comedienne’s estate planning. But Susie Morton’s lawsuit contends Luckinbill abandoned the items when they were distributed after Ball’s death.

A phone message left for Susie Morton’s attorney was not immediately returned Wednesday.

Palmieri said the items would go to either a museum named after her mother and father in New York, or another museum where they could be shown.

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MOSCOW (AP) – Two Russian curators who angered the Russian Orthodox Church with an exhibition that included images of Jesus Christ portrayed as Mickey Mouse and Vladimir Lenin were convicted Monday of inciting religious hatred and fined, but not sentenced to prison.

The case of Yuri Samodurov, 58, and Andrei Yerofeyev, 54, has been closely watched by human rights activists. The decision by a Moscow court could sidestep the possibility of an international outcry over imprisoning the two respected art-world figures, but is unlikely to stem concerns about the growing influence of the church and the specter of Soviet-style censorship returning.

“This conviction means our government is following a dangerous path for a so-called democracy,” Samodurov said in the courtroom right after the hearing. He said he couldn’t pay the fine and would appeal the verdict, which took Judge Svetlana Alexandrova just over two hours to deliver in a packed and sweltering courtroom.

Alexandrova said she took into account the defendants’ ages and families in deciding against incarcerating them.

The curators were convicted for their 2007 exhibit titled “Forbidden Art” at the Sakharov Museum, a human rights center named after celebrated dissident physicist and Nobel peace prize laureate Andrei Sakharov.

The two could have been sentenced to up to three years in prison, but were ordered only to pay fines of up to 200,000 rubles ($6,500).

Artists and activists had appealed to the Kremlin to put a stop to the prosecution. Even Russia’s culture minister said the two men did nothing to break the law against inciting religious hatred. Other curators have promised to display the exhibit to support the two defendants.

But the prosecutors, backed by a resurgent Orthodox Church enjoying its best relations with the Kremlin since the Soviet break up, refused to back down.

After Monday’s verdict there were brief scuffles outside the court as the defendants’ supporters clashed with Orthodox activists angry that the defendants were set free.

“This can’t be allowed to stand,” said church activist Leonid Semyonovich, dressed in black and holding a silver cross nailed to a wooden plinth. “Society must be protected from these people. We wage spiritual war on them and will hound them out of Russia.”

The religious activists’ chants of “Disgrace! Disgrace!” were drowned out by “Bravo! Bravo!” from supporters.

In the years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Russian Orthodox Church has grown into a powerful institution that claims more than 100 million followers. It has vocally criticized tolerance of homosexuality, abortion and multiparty democracy, while critics have accused top clerics of involvement in shady business deals and corruption.

Samodurov, who was the museum’s director from its founding in 1996 until he stepped down in 2008, had once been convicted of inciting religious hatred and fined the equivalent of $3,600 for an exhibit in 2003 called “Caution: Religion!”

Yerofeyev is a former head of contemporary art at the State Tretyakov Gallery, one of Russia’s most renowned museums.

The 2007 exhibit was closed a few days after it opened after a group of altar boys defaced many of the contemporary paintings, which used religious allusions to express attitudes toward religion, culture and the state.

Religious ultranationalist groups won the support of the Russian Orthodox Church in pushing prosecutors to bring charges in 2008 and then kept up their pressure on the two curators throughout the trial.

Another court case also could be looming in Russia involving nationalists and an artist.

Moscow contemporary artist Lena Hades said she has been interrogated by district prosecutors for allegedly inciting hatred against Russia with two paintings that show the country in a negative light.

Hades said the investigator had a “huge” file with printouts of her comments in livejournal, an online diary website, and previous exhibits. She said she is being threatened with up to two years in prison, and that the case started after nationalists filed more than 300 complaints against her.

She is awaiting word of any charges.

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AP writer Khristina Narizhnaya contributed to this report.

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AP-ES-07-12-10 0958EDT

 

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP) – A family feud over the $2 million estate of famed children’s book author Tasha Tudor raged on Friday, with a Probate Court judge warning that barring settlement, the only eventual winners may be the lawyers involved.

Meanwhile, the man at the center of the estate fight said he and his family took good care of Tudor in the years before her death in 2008, at 92. In his first public comments, son Seth Tudor said allegations of elder abuse of his mother are untrue.

“We’ve been very unfairly characterized by the news, because we haven’t spoke to the news people,” said Tudor, 68. “And some of the things that have been said are absolutely untrue, and extremely unfair, and highly detrimental to our image.”

Tasha Tudor, an illustrator, won worldwide fame for her drawings and watercolors illustrating Little Women, The Secret Garden and dozens of other children’s books, evoking idyllic scenes of family life in 19th-century New England.

But the fight over her estate has laid bare grievances among her four children, three of whom say her 2001 will – which gives most of the assets to Seth Tudor and his family – may have been executed under duress.

The will, which asked that she be buried with her predeceased dogs and the ashes of her pet rooster, left most of the assets to Seth Tudor, of Marlboro, and his son, Winslow Tudor, 35. Her two daughters got $1,000 each and Thomas Tudor got a valuable antique highboy.

In court filings and interviews, Thomas Tudor and his attorney have taken aim at Seth Tudor, saying he manipulated Tasha Tudor and may have exerted influence over her or gotten her to change her will to benefit him.

Two years after it was filed, the estate case is inching along under the weight of back-and-forth bickering between the parties.

“Whatever happens, the lawyers are going to make out well,” said Probate Court Judge Robert Pu, who showed his displeasure with the pace several times Friday during a daylong hearing.

He scolded the parties for fighting over the most mundane things  including a snowplowing bill for Tudor’s home in Marlboro  and said nothing was progressing “unless I have the heel of my foot on everyone’s back.”

As it is, the two sides remain far apart on issues relating to book copyrights, the legitimacy of a signature on the application form for a Tasha Tudor brokerage accounts that held $775,000 at the time of her death, the total assets of the estate, the value of gifts given to the four through the years and dozens of other issues.

In a new twist, the court-appointed administrator for Tasha Tudor’s estate told the court Friday that the Internal Revenue Service is planning an audit of the estate’s tax returns. For now, it’s unclear what bearing that will have on the estate litigation.

Seth and Winslow Tudor sat on one side of the hearing table Friday, with Thomas Tudor and his attorneys on the other. Sister Bethany Tudor sat behind them, and sister Efner Tudor Holmes, who lives in Contoocook, N.H., was absent.

Pu, who said he expects the case to be appealed to Windham Superior Court whichever way he rules, said the Probate Court trial will begin in November, barring a settlement. That didn’t appear likely Friday, though.

“If the legal fees got frozen, I believe this thing would get settled real fast,” said Mark Schwartz, who is Thomas Tudor’s attorney.

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AP-ES-07-09-10 1700EDT