Blog Subscription via Follow.it

Showing posts with label claims. Show all posts
Showing posts with label claims. Show all posts

April 21, 2023

Friday, April 21, 2023 - ,,,,,,,, No comments

Summer Course in Provenance Research, Theory and Practice

Photo taken by Nazi authorities during World War II
showing a room filled with stolen art
at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris

Recognizing that reclaiming looted cultural assets can feel like a Sisyphean task, and that restitution cannot be accomplished without the practical knowledge of how to conduct critical research, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) and the US-based Holocaust Art Restitution Project, [Inc.] (HARP), have teamed up to offer its 4th annual stand-alone provenance course which tackles the complex issues of cultural plunder.

Course Title: “Provenance and the Challenges of Recovering Looted Assets,”
Course Dates: June 26 - 30, 2023
Course Location: Amelia, Italy
Exhibition in the library of the Collecting Point, summer 1947
© Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte

Open to applicants interested in exploring the ownership history of looted cultural objects, their trafficking and their restitution/repatriation, this 5-day course will provide participants with exposure to research methodologies used to clarify and unlock the past history of objects likely to have been displaced in periods of crisis. It will also examine the complex nuances of post war and post conflict restitution and repatriation, as well as its ethical underpinnings.

This course is taught by Marc Masurovsky, who cofounded HARP in September 1997 and currently serves as its Director of Research. 

Since 1980 Marc has examined the general question of assets looted during the Nazi era and has worked as an expert historian on a class-action lawsuit filed by Jewish claimants against three leading Swiss banks, accusing them of having expropriated the property that their families had deposited in their safes and bank accounts. 

As a consultant and historian for the Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, Masurovsky, has investigated alleged Nazi war criminals living in the U.S. and post-war relations between former Nazi officials and Allied intelligence agencies. Mr. Masurovsky earned his M.A. in Modern European History from American University in Washington, D.C. For his Master's thesis, he researched "Operation Safehaven: the Allied response to Nazi post-defeat planning, 1944-1948". He is also the co-author with Fabrizio Calvi of Le Festin du Reich (Editions Fayard, 2006).

This course will provide participants with the opportunity to engage in an intensive, guided, dynamic exchange of ideas on research methods while highlighting the multiple diplomatic, political and financial challenges raised by restitution and repatriation claims. Special emphasis will also be placed on the contextual framework of provenance research in an era increasingly reliant on digital tools.

With an emphasis on an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, this provenance course will benefit anyone with an interest in art, art history, art collecting, the global art market writ large, museum and curatorial studies, art and international law, national and international cultural heritage policies.

As an added bonus participants accepted into this 5-day course will automatically registered be registered to attend ARCA’s Amelia Conference, the weekend of June 23-25, 2023.  This weekend-long forum of intellectual and professional exchange which explores the indispensable role of research, detection, crime prevention and criminal justice responses in combating all forms of art crime and the illicit trafficking in cultural property. 

For more information on the course, course fees and how to apply, please see this link.

November 2, 2020

Monday, November 02, 2020 - ,,,, No comments

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project files an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court in the Guelph Treasure case opposing the DOJ's position that Holocaust takings do not qualify as expropriation under federal law

Press Contacts:  

In Washington, DC: Marc Masurovsky, (00) 1 202 255 1602 , plunderedart@gmail.com

In New York, NY: Pierre Ciric (00) 1 212 260 6090, pciric@ciriclawfirm.com

New York, NY USA – October 29, 2020

On October 28, 2020, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, a not-for-profit group dedicated to the identification and restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi, filed, through its counsel, Pierre Ciric, Esq., an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in the so-called “Guelph Treasure” case currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

This case involves the Welfenschatz, or Guelph trove, currently in the possession of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (“the Foundation”) and has been claimed by successors of art dealers who were fleeing the Holocaust. These objects were originally housed in the cathedral in Braunschweig, owned by the House of Guelph. In the 1920s, the pieces were sold to a consortium of Frankfurt art dealers. Later in 1935, the Prussian state, led by Hermann Goering, “bought” the treasure from those art dealers. Following a 2014 rejection of the dealers’ heirs claims by the German so-called “Limbach Commission,” suit was brought against the Foundation and Germany in the U.S. 

In siding with the German defendants, the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) argued that Germany was immune from suit because “domestic takings” by foreign governments do not fall under the expropriation exception to the immunity rules.

HARP’s amicus brief argues that the DOJ’s defense is baseless because of legal precedents, is contrary to multiple U.S. statutes promulgated by the U.S. Congress and to the long-standing U.S. policy regarding restitution of Nazi-looted artworks claimed by Holocaust survivors.  Finally, the brief argues that the DOJ’s position would raise significant due process concerns by distinguishing heirs of German Jews from heirs of Jews stripped of their citizenship during the Holocaust.

According to Ori Z. Soltes, HARP’s chairman, “it is simply disheartening to see our own government arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Holocaust does not qualify as a genocidal enterprise worthy of being recognized as a ‘violation of international law.’  If the Holocaust does not fall squarely in this definition, then nothing else does!  The Court should reject this baseless argument and ensure that the U.S. remains a proper forum for claimants to seek redress from the genocidal enterprise of looting cultural assets from Jews during World War II.”

The Ciric Law Firm, PLLC is a New York law firm specialized in cultural heritage law and in commercial litigation services for businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals.

HARP is a not-for-profit group dedicated to the identification and restitution of looted artworks requiring detailed research and analysis of public and private archives in North America. HARP has worked for 22 years on the restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi regime. 

The case is Philipp v. Fed. Republic of Germany, 894 F.3d 406 (D.C. Cir. 2018), cert. granted, No. 19-351 (U.S. July 2, 2020).

October 13, 2011

Thursday, October 13, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Professor Jennifer Kreder Clarifies Statement Made to The New York Times about a 16th Century Painting on Extended Display in a Nazi-era Looted Art Dispute

Jennifer Kreder, a participant in ARCA's 2010 International Art Crime Conference where she spoke about the issues of Nazi-era looted restitution claims, would like to clarify an opinion of hers that was roughly quoted in the New York Times in the October 12 article, "For Florida Museum, Dispute Over Romano Painting is a Boon".

A U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida ordered the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee to 'hold onto' a 16th century painting by Girolamo Romano,  on loan from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan at the close of a Baroque exhibition last month. The American Institution "renegotiated its contract to display" Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue (1538) while 'Italian officials in Rome' 'negotiate with the family of Giuseppe Gentili, which says the collaborationist Vichy government in France seize dthe painting and sold it at auction in 1941,' journalist Patricia Cohen reported.

Kreder is Chair of the American Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Cultural Heritage and the Arts and Professor at Salmon P. Chase College of Law in Northern Kentucky University.

According to Jen Kreder, something got lost in translation by the time the article hit the press.  Although Kreder cannot comment on the merits of the claim, she said that it is particularly surprising that no one on the Italian side, which had knowledge of the claim, seems to have insisted that the museum apply for immunity from seizure, which is not available after the object is in the U.S.  Before this incident, Professor Kreder published the following article in the Washington University Law Review discussing the prior Wally, Benningson/Alsdorf Picasso and Jullian Fallat seizures, which may be of interest to readers:  http://lawreview.wustl.edu/commentaries/executive-weapons-to-combat-infections-of-the-art-market/.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)