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So if this piece were the only thing you inherited and you were broke, you would owe the Irs $29M and have no way to pay it. Your heirs will repeat this exercise unless you donate it - and still owe the taxes.

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You can refuse to accept an inheritance. It goes to whoever is next in line. If everybody refuses, the state gets to keep it.

You only get to refuse inheritance in full in most jurisdictions. You do not get to pick and choose to refuse.

Hence GP's counterfactual, "if this piece were the only thing you inherited and you were broke".

Sad though to refuse a 500k USD house with a negative 29 million USD bird in it.

Ok, fine - let's say you're going to inherit $100k and the art.

In such case the right thing to do would be to default on the IRS debt and let the IRS reposes the artwork. Then report a crime and watch the ensuing flames between US government departments.

The IRS would probably get a court order. Why would any other government department give a crap?

It was a joke. Selling the artwork is a crime, and so should be repossession. Or at best the IRS would have some issues while liquidating the newly repossessed artwork.

The other departments is DOJ, or whoever enforces the prohibition on the sale of the artwork.

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