Erie Art Museum Refuses to Return ‘Abandoned’ Painting to Daughter of Late Local Artist

The Erie Art Museum has responded to a lawsuit filed on Nov. 7, 2025, by the daughter of a local artist, requesting the return of a watercolor painted by her late father. The artist, George C. Demiel, submitted the painting to be included in an annual juried show in 1966 at the museum, which was then known as the Art Center of Erie. The Art Center did not accept the painting, and Demiel—who died the following year at age 53—never reclaimed the artwork.

The Erie Times-News, which has been covering the lawsuit, reported that the museum’s December 12 response refers to the watercolor, titled House Boats, as “abandoned personal property.” The response continues to explain that “After Mr. Deimel did not return to retrieve the work and/or notify the Art Center of his intention to reclaim the same, the Art Center then took possession of what was then abandoned personal property, and placed the work in storage until it was formally accessioned to the now Art Museum’s permanent collection in 1983.” (The institution changed names that year.)

Demiel’s 82-year-old daughter Georgia Heynes learned that the museum still possessed House Boats in 2019, when she saw it hanging in an exhibition at the museum. The show, “Everything But the Shelves,” featured some 1,000 framed artworks that had been in storage at the museum, hung salon-style in the galleries.

At that point Heynes asked for the painting back, and, according to the suit, Joshua Helmer, then-CEO of the Erie Art Museum, wrote a letter in March 2019 saying the museum would give the painting to Deimel’s closest living relative when it was deaccessioned from the museum’s collection. (This apparently never happened, and the museum parted ways with Helmer, who was accused of sexual harassment, in January 2020.) The museum’s response to the November 2025 lawsuit argues that Heynes waited too long to file her suit, pointing out that the two-year statute of limitations to file a claim to recover an item that was taken has passed.

Joseph M. Walsh III, a judge on the Erie County Court of Common Pleas, has scheduled a conference for March 16 to review the details of the case.