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Showing posts with label George Clooney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Clooney. Show all posts

February 20, 2014

Thursday, February 20, 2014 - ,,, No comments

A Nod to the Monuments Men: The National Gallery of Art’s New Exhibition; Event March 16 features Lynn H. Nicholas, author of "The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War"

"Monuments Officers and the NGA"
By Kirsten Hower, Social Networking Correspondent and List-Serve Manager

In lieu of the release of George Clooney’s film adaptation of the story of The Monuments Men and their endeavors to save the art of Europe, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., like many other institutions, has put on an exhibition, Monuments Officers and the NGA (Feb. 11-Sep. 1, 2014), celebrating the real men behind the mass rescue mission to save Europe's art. Given the National Gallery’s involvement in the efforts to start the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program, it is hardly surprising to find an exhibition held in conjunction with the opening of this film based on Robert Edsel's book by the same name.

Tucked into the Founder’s Room, just off of the spacious Rotunda in the West Wing, the exhibition is actually far smaller than one would expect. The entirety of the exhibition is one display case that, while very small, is full of some very interesting jewels. Pulled mostly from the Gallery’s own archives of the MFAA, the exhibit is composed of pictures of saved sites, men at work collecting stolen works of art, and other photos related to the war.

If you happen to be passing through Washington DC before September 1st, stop by the National Gallery of Art to see the exhibition and relish in some of the factual aspects of the story of the rather amazing Monuments Men.

This press release by the gallery announces an upcoming event:
On March 16 at 2:00 p.m., the Gallery will host the lecture The Inside Story: The Monuments Men and the National Gallery of Art detailing its relationship with the Monuments Men of the MFAA. Speakers will include Maygene Daniels, chief of Gallery Archives; Gregory Most, the Gallery's chief of library image collections; and Lynn H. Nicholas, author of The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. Faya Causey, head of the academic programs department, will moderate. The event is free and open to the public and the audience is invited to participate in an open discussion afterwards.

February 7, 2014

Friday, February 07, 2014 - ,, No comments

The Monuments Men: George Clooney's Movie Opened in North American Theaters Today, Think "Oceans 12" meets "The Train"

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA blog Editor

The morning screening of George Clooney's "The Monuments Men" in Pasadena today attracted a larger audience that other art crime related recent films ("The Trance" and "The Missing Piece". This movie is not a foreign film or a documentary (for that you can see "The Rape of Europa" on Netfix or DVD) but a Hollywood project populated by popular film actors such as John Goodman, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, and Cate Blanchett. After a sobering opening of the dismantling of the Ghent Altarpiece, the gathering of the Monuments Men team leads me to describe the film quickly as "Oceans 12" meets "The Train" featuring another handsome actor, Burt Lancaster, and both of those movies reached a wide audience.

As for a 'review' of this movie, I prefer overheard comments. During the closing credits, the woman sitting next to me offered her unsolicited opinion: "Leave it to Clooney to find this and bring it to us." Overheard from a stall in the women's restroom: "If nothing else, it gets you interested enough to investigate it."

I'm not going to ruin your entertainment by talking about what happens in the film so let me discuss some of the questions I had leaving the theater: Did any of the real members of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section (informally known as the Monuments Men) die while searching to recover the art Hitler had systematically stolen from European museums and private Jewish collections (the answer is yes)? The Monuments Men website, sponsored by Robert Edsel, viewable on this page lists members of the MFAA and is trying to gather biographical information and photographs to commemorate those who served.

What is the true story of saving Michelangelo's Bruges Madonna and Child? How did the Monuments Men really find the salt mine hiding the art masterpieces? Were the Soviets in the Trophy Brigade really on the trail of the Monuments Men racing to recover art that would not be returned to European countries but be used as compensation for the 20 million plus Russian lives lost during the war? And I want to know everything about Rose Valland, the French woman initially jailed as a Nazi conspirator for her work in the Jeu de Paume where Nazis collected and confiscated Jewish art collections.

You'll have some questions of your own to add. As for me, I'm diving back into my iBook copies of The Rape of Europa (Lynn Nicholas) and The Monuments Men (Robert M. Edsel with Brett Witter) until I can take my kids back to the see the movie -- because even my teenagers have said they'll see the George Clooney movie on art theft.

UPDATE:

ARCA blog subscriber Paul Lahaie, Massachusetts, wrote in with his observations: The movie does a fairly decent job of following the book. Battle scenes, showing how the Monuments Men [via personal letters to their wives] battling military bureaucracy and achieving more than anyone thought they would. The book and move critics say the same thing -- not enough art. Tough! The audience clapped until the end of the film credits.

 Here the University of Iowa profiles Monuments Man George Stout, an UI alum and the future director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 

February 5, 2014

Wednesday, February 05, 2014 - ,,,,, No comments

Monuments Men Feature Film: George Clooney's new movie involves Nazi-looted art and seeing it is strictly professional

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog

Two more days until the new George Clooney movie on the Monuments Men. There are serious preparations to be done -- re-watch "The Rape of Europa" on Netflix; finish reading Robert E. Edsel's book on The Monuments Men (available in print, on audible, and in iBooks); peruse Lynn Nicholas' book The Rape of Europa (paperback and iBooks); and then watch tonight's show featuring ARCA founder Noah Charney on National Geographic, "Hunting Hitler's Treasures Stolen Treasures: the Monuments Men".

Nicholas' The Rape of Europa provides an overall view of the Nazi efforts to dominate and claim culture for the Third Reich, including the confiscation of "degenerate art" from German museums; theft from Jewish private collections; and the attempted obliteration of Slavic and Russian culture. Robert E. Edsel co-produced the film on Nichols' book and wrote Rescuing Da Vinci, a photographic essay on the Nazis' attempt to steal Europe's art.

Here's a link to an article published in the Harvard Gazette, "A monument to saved art: Harvard-trained conservators were key players in tracking, rescuing priceless works in World War II (written by Edward Mason, Harvard Correspondent)". The article, which covers a panel with Edsel and a Skype call from actor Matt Damon, points out that Clooney plays a fictional character.
The “Monuments Men” belonged to the U.S. Army’s Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section. Their ranks included Lincoln Kirstein ’30, the founder of the New York City Ballet; Paul Sachs, Class of 1900, a member of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, which recruited many of the team’s members; and Stout. Born in 1897, Stout was a tall, dashing man with a pencil-thin mustache ­— not unlike actor George Clooney, who in the film plays the Stout-like team leader, Frank Stokes. Clooney also produced and directed the movie and co-wrote the screenplay. Stout helped pioneer the field of art conservation while a graduate assistant at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum. Long before World War II, he had the vision to see the risk aerial bombing and firebombing posed to art, Edsel said. Stout had spent the early ’40s pushing for a national art conservation plan. The Allies and Stout knew that bombs were hardly the only danger to art. The Nazis engaged in “premeditated, organized looting never before seen in war,” Edsel said. The hunger their leaders displayed for European art put Western treasures at risk.
Other articles to read while you wait for the George Clooney movie on Nazi-looted art and the team of middle-aged art professionals who tried to save Europe's culture:

Anna Goldenberg interviews MM's Harry Ettlinger in The Jewish Daily Forward.

"Monuments Men" is a popular phrase for the MFAA section, the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives, which did include women as this article by Tom Mashberg points out here in The New York Times.

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