Milton Esterow, Who Reported on Art Stolen in World War II, Dies at 97

Milton Esterow, a New York Times arts journalist who, in 1972, bought and reinvigorated ARTnews magazine and, at both media outlets, helped bring an investigative edge to culture reporting, especially regarding artwork looted by the Nazis, died on Oct. 3 at his home in Manhattan. He was 97.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Judith Esterow, a former associate publisher of ARTnews.

Mr. Estero joined The New York Times as a 17-year-old copy boy in 1945, became assistant to the director of cultural news before he left the paper in 1968, and returned nearly a half-century later as a freelancer. He may or may not have been the oldest person ever to write for The Times, but he appeared to be the reporter who went the longest — more than 45 years — between bylines, said his editor, Kevin Flynn.

A draft of his final article, about the restitution of art stolen during the Holocaust — written as always on Mr. Esterow’s 1950 Royal typewriter, digitally scanned by his daughter and emailed to Mr. Flynn — was submitted before he died and remains scheduled for publication in the near future.

Mr. Esterow found his niche at The Times by bringing the toughness of his early coverage on the crime beat to culture reporting. On Nov. 16, 1964, his article about treasures stolen by the Nazis appeared on the front page of The Times under the headline “Europe is Still Hunting Its Plundered Art.” It inspired him to dig further into the topic, leading to his book “The Art Stealers” (1966).

Itching for a bigger role, he left The Times to run the publishing division of Kennedy art galleries in New York and, in 1972, to lead an eight-person investor group in purchasing ARTnews from Newsweek, then a division of The Washington Post Company.

ARTnews, a monthly founded in 1902, was the nation’s oldest arts magazine, but it was adrift financially, with a circulation of only about 30,000. Mr. Esterow instituted a makeover, moving beyond the publication’s traditional focus on reviews to broaden and sharpen its coverage of what he called the “fascinating and mysterious” happenings of the art world.

The magazine began reporting on the art market and museum personnel controversies and profiling art world personalities. Mr. Esterow began a popular feature in 1990 — the Top 200 Collectors list — to explore the reasons people collect art. And he continued the investigative work he had started at The Times.

Under his stewardship as publisher and editor, ARTnews became one of the most widely circulated art magazines. It won a National Magazine Award for general excellence in 1981 and George Polk awards for cultural reporting in 1980 and 1991, the latter for investigating art stolen by the Soviets during its occupation of Germany after World War II.

Robin Cembalest, a former executive editor at ARTnews, wrote on Instagram that Mr. Esterow was “justly proud of the impact of the magazine’s relentless investigatory journalism — particularly when it came to the restitution of Holocaust war loot.”

His Jewish heritage most likely played a role in his interest in the topic, Judith Esterow said, but he appeared driven more by a journalist’s desire to break news. “For him, getting a scoop was like the best thing in life,” she said.

In 1984, Mr. Esterow received a tip that a monastery in Mauerbach, Austria, was rumored to house thousands of artworks confiscated by the Nazis. (An estimated 25,000 Jewish homes were sacked in Austria.) He and his wife flew to Vienna, where the minister of the Federal Monuments Office of Austria, pounding on his desk, declined to let him visit the monastery, as Mr. Esterow recounted in his 2009 lecture.

He told the minister that such a defensive posture made him suspicious and “that maybe you’re hiding something.” The interview quickly ended.

Back home, Mr. Esterow assigned a contributing editor, Andrew Decker, to the story. It was published in December 1984 under the headline “A Legacy of Shame.” Almost every year for a decade, ARTnews continued to report on what the Austrian government acknowledged was its deficient handling of the return of the monastery art objects to their rightful owners and heirs.

In 1985, Austria announced a plan to return 8,000 works of art and other objects taken from Jews by the Nazis. According to ARTnews, 77 paintings and 236 other objects were returned. In 1995, the remaining objects were transferred to the Federation of Jewish Communities of Austria. They were auctioned in 1996 by Christie’s, raising more than $14 million to help needy Holocaust victims and their heirs.

Mr. Esterow sold ARTnews in 2014, after its circulation had risen to 80,000, for an undisclosed amount to a private asset management firm owned by the Russian entrepreneur Sergey Skaterschikov. Afterward, Mr. Esterow contributed freelance articles to The Times and continued to report on the Nazi looting.

In 2016, Austria’s consul general, Georg Heindl, honored Mr. Esterow and Mr. Decker on behalf of the country, saying they had “contributed to Austria facing its past honestly and thereby becoming, in a way, a better country.”

Milton Esterow was born on July 28, 1928, in Brooklyn. His father, Bernard Esterow, owned a small grocery. His mother, Yetta (Barash) Esterow, managed the home.

At 10, Milton published a neighborhood newspaper that he sold for two cents a copy. On joining The Times, his first assignment as a copy boy was to buy the latest edition of The Daily Racing Form for the managing editor, who placed his horseracing bets with Mr. Esterow’s boss, the chief copy boy.

After being promoted to reporter in 1948, Mr. Esterow dropped out of Brooklyn College, figuring he would learn journalism by practicing it over studying it. An early lesson in the importance of attention to detail came that year, when he was assigned to cover a murder in a Bronx apartment. He phoned in his report, and a rewrite man patiently asked questions that led Mr. Esterow to realize that his story was less than authoritative.

In addition to his daughter Judith, he is survived by another daughter, Deborah Rothstein; three grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and four step great-grandchildren. His wife of 74 years, Jacqueline (Levine) Esterow, died in May.

A raconteur, Mr. Esterow loved to dish about people he knew in the art world. He often told the story of how his friend the artist Robert Rauschenberg could be absent-minded about business. He once opened an envelope containing a check that he thought was for $1,600 but, his secretary discovered, was really for $1.6 million. “I have trouble with zeros,” Mr. Rauschenberg confessed.

Mr. Esterow loathed what he considered the inaccessibility of much art criticism. He joked in his 2009 lecture that for years he had sought grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for those who wanted to write simple declarative sentences.

To make his point, he recalled a story about the art historian Meyer Schapiro, whom he regarded highly and chased for a decade to consent to an interview in ARTnews. Years ago, he said, Mr. Schapiro was honored with a black-tie dinner at the Pierre hotel in Manhattan, where he gave a speech that was mostly fascinating but opaque to some.

After the speech, the actress Ruth Gordon approached the podium and told Mr. Schapiro, “Dear professor, I didn’t understand a word you said, but it’s great, just great, that you know so much.”