The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris is threatening legal action against the Hunt Museum in Limerick over its refusal to grant the centre access to the museum archive.
The threat follows the centre's allegations that some of the museum collection may have originally been looted by the Nazis. The allegations centre on the business activities of the couple who amassed the collection - the late John Hunt and his late wife Gertrude - who are alleged to have had links with dealers in looted art.
The claims are denied by the Hunts' children, Mr John Hunt and Ms Trudi Hunt, who have stood aside from the museum board pending an inquiry.
The museum is currently establishing the membership of the inquiry, to be led by a retired judge, which will report to the museum. As part of that process, the museum wants to hire an archivist to write a detailed list of the museum's archive.
The Wiesenthal centre, which wanted a fully independent investigation into the museum's collection, has said it should be allowed to nominate a member of any inquiry into the collection. It has also sought immediate access to the museum's archive.
But the museum moved late last week to reject the centre's demand for access, saying that it was not physically possible to facilitate two major reviews of the archive.
The centre said yesterday that it was "astonished" at this response. Its international liaison director, Dr Shimon Samuels, claimed that the employment by the museum of a researcher, regardless of that person's calibre, was akin to "an exercise in incest".
Dr Samuels said in a letter to the museum that "good order" required the direct involvement of the centre in any investigation.
"Failing the museum's immediate agreement to this arrangement, we will be seeking an injunction against any access to all Hunt materials held at the museum, pending the establishment of a satisfactorily independent investigative instrument."
The Hunt Museum's director, Ms Virginia Teehan, would not comment on the letter, but said the museum would have to give it "serious reflection and consideration".
Dr Samuels said yesterday that he would give the museum until the end of the week to respond. "We will take legal counsel in Dublin to see whether there can be a legal dimension here," he said.
"The museum answered only my request for access. They have not answered my request to be put on an oversight committee. If they want to exclude an organisation that represents a constituency of putative claimants, it is denying acknowledgement of possible Holocaust survivors' claims."
Dr Samuels said tax relief granted to the Hunt family for museum donations "behoves a policy of transparency".
"I would like a tamper-proof independent inquiry, possibly by the Heritage Council, possibly by the Minister for Arts, which would include a representative of putative claimants," he said.
