Abstract
In 2004 the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) was contacted by the Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO) regarding a potential claim for a painting by Max Pechstein in the PMA's collection from the heirs of an important German Jewish collector, Ismar Littmann. In researching this artwork, the PMA confronted a situation involving conflicting lines of provenance: notes on the painting's history made by its former owner, Margot Simenauer Behrendt, who received the painting from her father Felix Simenauer, seemed to be contradicted by the date of a typescript inventory entry from the Littmann collection provided by the HCPO. It was unclear whether the conflict arose because the documentation or the Museum's interpretation of it was at fault or whether sufficient documentation was simply lacking. After exhausting all available avenues of research, the PMA had to reach a determination the Museum believed was just and fair to all parties in the face of ambiguous and even contradictory evidence.
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