Updates

Painting belongs to Yale, judge says

In March, a federal judge in Hartford rejected a claim that the Van Gogh masterpiece The Night Café—donated to the Yale Art Gallery in 1960—actually belongs to the heirs of its former owner (“Yale Sues to Protect Van Gogh Painting,” May/June 2009). Pierre Konowaloff had argued that in 1918, when the new Soviet government nationalized his great-grandfather’s property, it took the painting wrongfully. The painting was sold three times before it was given to Yale. Yale argued that the sale was legitimate and that ruling otherwise would cloud the titles of “at least $20 billion of art in global commerce.”

Investigations find no blame in professor’s death

Two internal reports released in February—one by New Haven police, the other by the Connecticut Judicial Branch, which oversees the jail at police headquarters—have found no wrongdoing in the treatment of Sam See, the Yale assistant professor who died in jail last November (“Campus Mourns Professor Who Died in Jail,” March/April). See was found unresponsive in his cell early in the morning after having been arrested the evening before in a domestic dispute. The state medical examiner ruled that See had died of a heart attack after taking methamphetamine.