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Last month, the two museums agreed to a settlement under which they would continue to own two Picasso paintings in their collections and would pay the heirs of the works' original owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, to settle the dispute.

The heirs demanded that the terms remain confidential, a decision the judge, Jed S. Rakoff, questioned when the settlement was announced, citing the museums' public roles and the gravity of the case.

Speaking out this week, Rakoff said that the museums had agreed to announce the terms, but that the heirs, “for reasons wholly unexplained and seemingly no more compelling than concealing the amount of money going into their pockets, remain opposed.”

He added that “the fact that the plaintiffs, who repeatedly sought to clothe themselves as effectively representatives of victims of one of the most criminal political regimes in history, should believe that there is any public interest in maintaining the secrecy of their settlement baffles the mind and troubles the conscience.”

The works in question are Boy Leading a Horse, which was donated to MoMA in 1964, and Le Moulin de la Galette, which was given to the Guggenheim in 1963. Julius H. Schoeps, a great-nephew of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, told the museums in 2007 that he believed the works had been sold to an art dealer under duress and demanded their return.