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March 17, 2011

Thursday, March 17, 2011 - No comments

ARCA is Hiring A Program Assistant and Two Onsite Interns

ARCA needs 2 resident interns and a program assistant to join us in Amelia this summer. Details are below:

Program Assistant Job Announcement

Resident Intern Job Announcement

Thursday, March 17, 2011 - ,, No comments

Samuel Sidibé, Director of the National Museum of Mali, Spoke Wednesday at UNESCO in Paris about the 1970 Convention and How the Severe Problem of Looting of Archaeological Sites Was Exacerbated By Demand in the Art Market for Wooden and Ceramic Masks

Samuel Sidibé of Mali posed for photograph
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, editor

PARIS - Samuel Sidibé, the director of the National Museum of Mali, the last speaker scheduled on Tuesday, actually opened the second day of the 40th commemoration meeting at UNESCO on the 1970 Convention when time ran out on on the panel, "Illicit trafficking of archaeological objects". Attendance appeared to have thinned out and the cameras had disappeared, but when I mentioned this to Mr. Sidibé at the lunchbreak, he said, "I don't need any cameras." But I thought what he said was important enough to mention here. As one of the other delegates mentioned, Mr. Sidibé was one of the few experts from the continent of Africa to speak at the meeting, and the only one from outside of Egypt and Tunisia.

Mali, Mr. Sidibé began, perhaps because the Niger River runs across it, has many archaeological sites. He said that problems of looting and illicit excavations peaked in the 1970s and 1980s due to the publicity of the discovery of legitimate archaeological sites and the popularity of traditional wooden masks prized on the international market. Some unscrupulous people were falsifying the wooden masks, he said through an English interpreter as he spoke in French, the discovery of ceramic masks 'sparked interest as people lost faith in wooden masks'. This led to looting in ceramic masks. 'Originally looting occurred near the site by the Niger river where the ceramic masks were discovered but demand grew and spread to an interest in pottery in prehistoric sites,' Mr. Sidibé explained. 'It is a serious problem unique to Africa because although written manuscripts have been found in the Sahil region, they are lacking for other centers so artifacts are prized. It is an unacceptable moral situation to deprive people knowledge of their history.'

'What has Mali been doing to protect it's cultural heritage?' he posed. In 1985, he said, Mali adopted strict legislation that objects from archaeological sites cannot be traded commercially or exported for sale. 'All our archeological objects found in Europe are in violation of the law in Mali,' he said.

Mali ratified the 1970 Convention as a tool for international cooperation, he said. 'Mali signed an agreement with the United States to forbid the import of objects from Mali's archaeological sites and we are in partnership with the Swiss to set up an agreement to protect our heritage.'

They have other agreements with various countries and are in consultation with France, a significant art market, he said. 'Sixteen terra cotta statutes seized by the French government were returned to the Mali museum.'

In addition to working with the International Conference of Museums and the 'red list' for stolen items, they have had training programs at the professional and technical level in the field. To create awareness of the problem, they examined 'severely looted sites' of what remained to remained to better understand their context and spoke to communities throughout Mali.

'Communities have traditionally had the concept that sites are income,' he said, 'and we have been educating them that archaeological sites are culture.' He said that they will continue with research and training programs because 'too much looting is going on the African continent.'

March 16, 2011

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 - ,, No comments

Mexico and Canada at UNESCO's meeting on the 40th anniversary of the 1970 Convention

Ambassador Carlos de Icaza and Jorge Sánchez-Cordero
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

PARIS - I have two-days of notes on the more than 11 hours of panels and discussions that occurred over the past two days at UNESCO as attendees and experts discussed the 1970 Convention, the first international agreement that recognized that the smuggling and trade of art, antiquity objects, and the illegal excavations of archaeological sites was a global problem best attacked with international cooperation. But it is a beautiful spring evening in Paris and the Louvre is open tonight so this post features the delegates from Mexico and the anecdote of how I purchased a great cup of decaffeinated coffee as I walked away from the conference.

Carlos de Icaza, Ambassador of Mexico in France (and former Ambassador to the United States, spoke at the public debate today, moderated by the distinguished Dr. Davidson L. Hepburn, Chairman of the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation of The Bahamas. Ambassador de Icaza spoke about Mexico's history with the 1970 convention -- it was actively involved in the formulation and the eight country to ratify it. A national inventory identifies archaeological artifacts in public and private collections in Mexico. However, he said, "We are in a situation that we cannot tolerate. Many countries are being plundered through clandestine excavations. Despite all our efforts, criminals operate on sites and in the trafficking of cultural and archeological objects."

He went on to ask that UNESCO consider finding solutions to the gaps in the 1970 convention. "It is practically impossible to prove ownership from illicit excavations or from underwater sites. There is a huge illicit market today."

The Canadian delegate, Kathryn Zedde, Senior Policy Analyst for Canadian Heritage, later responded that "gaps" are in the interpreting and implementing the 1970 convention. "Canada has returned objects to ten other states including multiple groups of objects and none have been on any inventory list and almost all of them have been archaeological artifacts. Canada's legislation has prohibited the importing of any cultural property from other countries. We don't require objects to be listed as stolen from any museum."

Hours of discussion followed this subject so I'll write more about it later.

Antoine Netien and Tom Clark at Coutume
On my way home, I noticed a clean and crisp shop with a well-displayed list of coffee drinks. Approaching the bar I ordered a "latte" and was immediately busted as English-speaking by Tom Clark, who with Antoine Netien, operates Coutume (47, Rue de Babylone), a cafe specializing in high quality coffee and espresso drinks. Upon inquiry, Tom, an Australian brought up on great coffee, told me about how he graduated from law school then decided to help introduce fine coffee beans to Paris. In the back of the restaurant, Antoine was roasting beans, something he says he does from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. each day, roasting small batches at a time. The store has only been open a week, so grateful for their hospitality, I told them I'd let our readers know about a great place in the 7th arrondisement in Paris for coffee on the level of Intelligensia... and with no disrespect to our guys in Chicago and Los Angeles, I think Coutume may have a few more machines imported from Japan -- such as a 24 hour extraction that with its slow drip enhances the caffeine in the coffee. Well, I'm off to the Louvre to admire the objects Napoleon was able to keep after he plundered the best of Europe in the early 19th century. Ah the ironies...

March 15, 2011

Tuesday, March 15, 2011 - , 1 comment

Passing out "Save Egypt" buttons at UNESCO's 40th Anniversary of the 1970 Convention

Gihane Zaki, Director General, Nubia Fund, Ministry of Culture for Egypt wearing SAFE's button

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

ARCA Alum (Class 2009) Julia Brennan arranged with Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) to ship some buttons to me to promote cultural heritage protection in Egypt at the 40th commemoration meeting of UNESCO in Paris today. The gesture appeared worthwhile as one of the themes of today's discussions was promoting awareness of the importance of protecting the artifacts of culture. Although Zahi Hawass was unable to attend the meeting as scheduled, Egypt's representative from the Ministry of Culture was Gihane Zaki, Director General of the Nubia Fund. She put on the button, "Say Yes to Egypt's Heritage" and gamely posed for the photo promised Cindy Ho at SAFE. Ms. Zaki took additional buttons for her staff to wear at tomorrow's meeting. Dr. Zahi Hawass did post his 'address' to UNESCO on his site here. More reports here on the blog will follow regarding the meeting in the next few days.

March 14, 2011

Monday, March 14, 2011 - ,,, 1 comment

"The Louvre: A Golden Prison" produced by Lucy Jarvis and NBC News in the 1960s hints at the plain sight hiding location of a large painting during the Nazi Occupation of Paris

Lucy Jarvis (Paley Center)
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin

During my almost sleepless flight to Paris last night, I watched again a charming video downloaded for free from iTunes: an NBC News produced one-hour show on the Louvre, narrated by Charles Boyer and produced by Lucy Jarvis titled "The Louvre: A Golden Prison" (1964). The Paley Center for Media writes this about the film:
"Jarvis next produced a dual tour of the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., Museum Without Walls, which aired on NBC in 1963. The logistically complex project—among the first to utilize telecommunications satellite technology—served as a forerunner to a more detailed exploration of the Louvre that Jarvis had in mind. The previous year she had accompanied Kennedy on a state visit to Paris and it was there, during a social event, that she had first broached the idea of a documentary about the hallowed institution to French President Charles de Gaulle and Minister of Culture André Malraux. In a feat comparable to getting approval to shoot inside the Kremlin, Jarvis finagled permission to bring a camera crew into the Louvre; when the museum’s curators expressed concern that the intense lights required to gain a proper exposure (for the sake of aesthetic, the film was shot in color on 35mm rather than the customary black and white 16mm) might damage their treasured paintings, Jarvis reassured them by saying, “If Khrushchev trusted me, why can’t you?” The color cinematography was an important element for Jarvis; indeed, General Sarnoff, chairman of NBC, the parent company of RCA, credited her programs on the Kremlin and the Louvre with helping to sell four million color television sets. The Louvre: A Golden Prison, airing in 1964, was recognized with a staggering number of awards, among them six Emmys, a Peabody, and a Radio-TV Critics Award. In 1968, Jarvis became the first woman—and one of the few Americans—ever to receive the French government’s prestigious Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres."
In her introduction, Madame Jarvis speaks about how the curators emptied the Louvre prior to Nazi occupation of Paris. Yet one large painting, too big to move outside of the city, hung from the ceiling of a restaurant while Nazis dined below until the end of the war. What is the painting she is referring to? I would tell you but I don't recall in the video that they ever named the painting. I am wondering if one of our readers knows the answer.

Monday, March 14, 2011 - No comments

Museums and Nazi-looted Art: Provenance research departments and registeries

by Emily Blyze, ARCA Alum 2009
The last post of a five-part weekend series

In September 2009, the Indianapolis Museum of Art built an Object Registry for the AAMD devoted to the Resolution of Claims for Nazi-Era Cultural Assets. This registry provides information on the resolution of formal claims made to AAMD member museums regarding works of art stolen by the Nazis between 1933-1945. It lists objects restituted and settlements made since June 4, 1998, the date the Report of the AAMD Task Force on the Spoliation of Art during the Nazi/World War II Era (1933-1945) was adopted. The registry encourages openness regarding works nationally and internationally, a source for information on resolved claims for AAMD member museums, as well as supplement information provided by the AAM.

Guidelines and Procedures for World War II Provenance Issues created in September 2009 by The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is a 136-page document that breaks down the mechanics of how to conduct provenance research. The Freer/Sackler guidelines and procedures address their protocol on handling works, but also offer an ample resource for museums needing assistance. How to conduct provenance research was mentioned before in this paper. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research does achieve this goal and provides a sample for recording provenance, as well as specific case studies of how detail oriented a provenance researcher’s job is. However, the Freer/Sackler expands on the process of how to handle acquisition policies, loan agreements, suggested procedures and questionnaires for donors, vendors, curators who help in acquiring research information. A provenance research checklist and a provenance display procedure and guidelines section is available to reference as well.

With regard to making effective and economical steps towards correctly addressing their collection with proper provenance research, some museums have established provenance research websites. In accordance with the AAMD and AAM guidelines, institutions such as The Getty, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago have a designated space on their website addressing provenance research. The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art stated that through a significant gift from the Chase family of Connecticut, the Atheneum was able to conduct an in-depth provenance research project on its museum’s collection of approximately 50,000 objects of art. Their findings are posted on their website, stating if a work has clear or questionable provenance.

Museums have made strides towards compliance with the AAMD and AAM guidelines. But there is always room for strategic and effective growth. A recommendation for the future is to create a Nazi-Era Provenance Researchers Association (NEPRA). Alongside the WG Looted Art recommendation 7, the aim would be to establish an association where provenance researchers have a peer group not only to help each other, but develop the profession as well. NEPRA would need to be initiated by the Terezin Declaration, under the arm of the Terezin Institute. The Terezin Institute would be the umbrella for operation, but the association would maintain its own entity. That way it would have the support of the Terezin Declaration goals and objectives, but be able and nimble enough to create its own mission statement, purpose and bylaws. As with other associations, a Board of Governors or Council would need to be identified. From there, the founding principles would be drawn up by the Council. Nazi-era provenance researchers are a small, but powerful group of individuals. The goals of the association would be to educate and spread awareness with a concrete set of identified persons in the field; adhere to unified standards that will bring cohesiveness to the profession; bring together these individuals to disseminate information and resources; create a database of all affiliated personnel and institutions – a central location will help to alleviate time of contacting those in the field and promote more time towards research of the artwork.

All individuals and establishments involved with provenance research would be encouraged to join, adhering to the non-binding regulations of the Terezin Declaration. An act of “requirement” of participation would not be feasible. It is only when the Terezin Declaration becomes binding that the guidelines and recommendations falling under it will be followed. Establishments such as auction houses should be encouraged to join.

Auction houses, such as Sotheby’s, have established Nazi-era provenance research departments. Since 1997, Sotheby’s has run a due diligence program targeted at identifying possible WWII provenance issues amongst the artworks brought to them to value or sell. The program maintains a specialized international team of provenance researchers within Sotheby’s whose role is to support Sotheby’s specialists throughout the world in dealing with provenance research and spoliation issues. The team is staffed with art historians and lawyers in New York and London and calls on the services of a network of independent art historians based in Europe and North America. If auction houses join then there will be an economic and commercial incentive for doing so. By completing provenance research, it obviates the possibility of the auction house being litigated against for selling Nazi-era work. Their research will also often lead to the discovery of works that end up coming under the hammer as part of a settlement. Museums would be persuaded to join the association where they are forced to complete provenance research anyways for moral reasons.

As many as 70,000 artworks remain scattered in museums and private collections or simply lost around the world. There is a feeling that the process has stalled in some countries, thanks to a combination of political will and sheer ignorance of the provenance of artwork. In tackling the problem of Nazi-era looted works of art in public collections, provenance research has now shifted to the forefront of concern to many persons inside and outside the museum profession.

The very need to establish the Terezin project in addition to, and so soon after, the Washington Principles demonstrates that the issue is still an urgent and important one in international museum culture and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future.

March 13, 2011

Sunday, March 13, 2011 - ,, No comments

Museums and Nazi-looted Art: Washington Principles vs. Terezin Declaration

by Emily Blyze, ARCA Alum 2009
Part four of a five-part weekend series

Principles 3, 4, and 5 of the Washington Principles are worthy of attention compared to the equivalent recommendations in the Terezin Declaration Looted Art Working Group (which happen to be 3, 4, and 5 as well). The Washington Principles address the issue of resources and personnel being available to facilitate identification of a Nazi confiscated work not restituted (3). If established that a work was confiscated and not restituted, consideration should be given to unavoidable gaps or ambiguities in the provenance in light of the passage of time (4). Efforts should also be made to publicize the work of art in order to locate its pre-War owners or heirs (5). By contrast, the WG recommendations state that export, citizenship, inheritance and cultural heritage laws should not be used to prevent the restitution of cultural property to claimants. The Principles make no mention of legal issues, whereas the recommendations from the WG that the 46 states modify restitution legislation and establish national claims procedures create a stronger point to be considered.

The WG Looted Art recommendation 7 asserts that Participating States should actively support the establishment and operation of an international association of all provenance researchers. The association should encourage cooperation between researchers, the exchange of information, the setting of standards, and education. The proposal to create an association is the first of its kind. It begs the question of why this has not been done before now.

A notable difference between the Washington Principles and the Terezin Declaration is the availability of information via the Internet. Relevant records and archives should be open and accessible to researchers, in accordance with the guidelines of the International Council of Archives, reads Principle 2 of the Washington Principles. Keep in mind the technology of 1998 was very sparse and the material that was recommended to be open and accessible was primarily documents and books. However, the openness and accessibility of the Internet today has offered up a whole new dimension. This is particularly significant with regard to Principle 6, which states that efforts should be made to establish a central registry. This conjures the questions of how it would be accomplished and by whom.

The guidelines that have been created are an initiative to address and bring awareness to the Nazi World War II era plundering of art. A practical mind would ask whether these guidelines are achievable. Museums have asked how effective and economical steps might be made towards correctly addressing their collections with proper provenance research. Specifically stated, the AAMD Commission recognizes that provenance research is difficult, expensive and time-consuming, often involving access to records that are hard or impossible to obtain, and that most museums lack the resources to accomplish this. The Washington Principles recommended that art confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted be identified. Terms in the Principles such as “should,” “encouraged,” and “fair and just solution” can be ambiguous and leave room for interpretation. Language with such vagueness is hard to define and leads to the question, how to proceed with the principles presented. Furthermore, the mechanics of conducting provenance research is a topic that has been mostly neglected in both art-historical literature and in academic programs, especially at a time when the museum profession is being required to draw increasingly upon a variety of disciplines in order to adapt and survive. Legal proficiency can surely occupy no lower a priority than the more general skills of economic literacy, resource management and commercial enterprise that have become so substantial a part of contemporary museum and gallery administration.

Museum professionals today are in need of a transferable and interdisciplinary skill set. Knowledge of art history, politics, the history of collections, and the locations of archival materials that document the movement of art, in addition to provenance research, (a fairly specialized methodology in its own right), are all essential.

From 1998 to 2009, the recognized guidelines have plotted out scenery of what provenance research should look like. However, has this been accomplished? Have museums taken a direction that is suitable? On September 3, 2003 the AAM created a website aptly named the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal (NEPIP). The Internet Portal provides a searchable online registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi Era (1933-1945). Since the website was established, more than 28,000 objects have been posted by 165 U.S. art museums.

In 2001, The AAM Guide to Provenance Research was written by Nancy Yeide. The comprehensive AAM Guide is divided into two parts. Part One is an overview of basic provenance research and principles. Instruction is given on how to gather information from the work itself and how to use primary and secondary sources. It also has a template on how to write a provenance record used by several major museums such as the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Part Two discusses Holocaust-Era provenance research and how research should be prioritized. A significant aspect of the AAM Guide is the appendix and a list of selected bibliographies on the history of collecting, research resources, dealer archives and locations, resources for auction sales and exhibitions. “Red-flag” names from The Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) are present, as well as a list of consolidated and detailed interrogation reports and Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) codes. The ERR was the Nazi organization that carried out confiscations of Jewish property in occupied countries. Confiscations by the ERR in France alone total almost 17,000 objects from more than 200 families. The meticulous cataloguing of the collections confiscated was organized by codes assigned to the families from whom the objects were looted.

Sunday, March 13, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Nazi-looted Art Provenance: Emily Blyze on Museum Guidelines

by Emily Blyze, ARCA Alum 2009
Part three of a five-part weekend series

The crucial purpose of the European Shoah Legacy Institute in Terezin (Terezin Institute) is to follow up on the work of the Prague Conference and the Terezin Declaration. Initiated by the Czech Government, the Terezin Institute is a voluntary forum that facilitates an intergovernmental effort to develop non-binding guidelines and best practices for restitution and compensation of wrongfully seized immovable property. The priorities of the Terezin Institute will be to publish regular reports on activities related to the Terezin Declaration, develop websites to facilitate sharing of information, particularly in the fields of art provenance, as well as maintain and post lists of websites useful for Participating States, organizations representing Holocaust (Shoah) survivors and Nazi victims, and other non-governmental organizations (NGO).

Working Groups (WG) are composed of representatives of institutions with fundamental activities, field experience and research results related to the principal topics of the WG agenda. Each WG has two Co-Chairs (one from the Czech Republic and one from abroad) who are responsible for the overall planning and management of the agenda and schedule. The WGs established are Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, Immovable Property (Private and Communal), Looted Art, Judaica and Jewish Cultural Property, and a Special Session – Caring for Victims of Nazism and Their Legacy. Responsibilities of a WG are to prepare the agenda of the expert portion of the Prague conference, discuss the important focal points of their agenda, suggest the framework for presentations at the Prague conference, and draft recommendation for the final declaration.

The Looted Art Working Group prepared expert conclusions that acknowledges the Washington Principles, but “affirms the urgent needs to broaden, deepen and sustain these (Washington Principles) efforts in order to ensure just and fair solutions regarding cultural property looted during the Holocaust era and its aftermath."

March 12, 2011

Saturday, March 12, 2011 - ,,, No comments

Continued Discussion on Museum Guidelines for the Provenance of Nazi-Looted Art

Edgar Degas' "Landscape with Smokestacks" (Chicago Art Institute)
by Emily Blyze
ARCA Alum 2009

Part Two of Five in a special weekend series
Three major cases in the late 1990s shed light on the need for museums to have guidelines and policies on how to review their collections for Nazi-looted art.

Gutmann vs Searle: In 1995, Daniel Searle, a Board member of the Art Institute of Chicago, and then owner of the monotype pastel by Edgar Degas, Landscape with Smokestacks, received a claim from the family of Friedrich and Louise Gutmann, Dutch art collectors, who had owned the work prior to World War II. The case was settled in 1998. Searle, who purchased the work in good faith from a New York collector in 1987 on the Art Institute’s advice, had displayed the work on several occasions before receiving notice of the claim. Searle ceded a fifty percent (50%) ownership to the Art Institute and the other fifty percent (50%) was given to the Gutmann heirs, Lili Gutmann and her nephews, the Goodmans, who claimed the painting. As part of the settlement, the Art Institute purchased the Gutmanns’ half interest based on the current appraised value of the work.

Rosenberg vs Seattle Art Museum: The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) received a claim in 1997 from the Paul Rosenberg Family for the Henry Matisse painting, Odalisque. The SAM asked the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), a Washington, D.C.-based independent research organization, to conduct a thorough, scholarly and impartial investigation of the painting's provenance. Upon the HARP findings, the SAM returned the painting to the Rosenberg heirs.

The Leopold Schiele case: The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York received claims in 1997 for two paintings, Dead City III and Portrait of Wally, by Egon Schiele on loan from the Leopold Museum in Austria. The U.S. government confiscated the paintings under the National Stolen Property Act when it was on loan from the Leopold, claiming that the museum knew the Nazis had stolen the painting in 1939 from its Jewish owner, Lea Bondi. Dead City III was returned to the Leopold Museum because its former owner had no heirs. The Portrait of Wally case was settled in July 2010: the Leopold Museum paid $19 million to the estate of pre-war owner.

The American Association of Museum Directors (AAMD) established the Task Force on the Spoliation of Art during the Nazi/World War II era (1933-1945) on June 4, 1998. The Task Force recommended that museums review the provenance of their collections. The report's topics include a section entitled Statement of Principles, a section on Guidelines with subcategories that addressed Research Regarding Existing Collections, Future Gifts, Bequests, and Purchases, Access to Museum Records, Discovery of Unlawfully works of Art, Response to Claims Against the Museum, Incoming Loans, and a section with Database Recommendations. An Addendum was released April 30, 2001.

In 1998, the U.S. Federal Government held a series of congressional hearings, forming a Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the U.S. (PCHA) and hosted the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets. In connection with the conference, the “Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art” was released on December 3, 1998. Forty-four governments participated in developing a consensus of the 11 non-binding principles to assist in resolving Nazi-confiscated art issues.

The American Association of Museums (AAM) drafted their guidelines, Unlawful Appropriation of Objects during the Nazi Era, issued in 1999. In 2001, the AAM and AAMD, along with the PCHA, issued their reports defining the standards for disclosure of information and the creation of a searchable central registry of museum object information, as detailed in the AAM Recommended Procedures for Providing Information to the Public about Objects Transferred in Europe during the Nazi Era, adopted in May 2001.

On June 30, 2009, the European Union held a Holocaust Era Assets Conference in Prague and established the Terezin Declaration. The 46 participating nations endorsed the Terezin Declaration that strengthened and reaffirmed the Washington Principles and reinforced the need for continued provenance research. The Terezin Declaration maintains the non-binding nature of the Washington Principles, but also promotes an urgent need to strengthen and sustain the efforts of the principles. The sense of urgency is noted, but why the need for the Terezin Declaration? What can be accomplished with the Terezin Declaration that could not with the Washington Principles? A letter from the Ambassador Miloš Pojar, Chairman of the Organizing Committee states, “It is our moral and political responsibility to support the Holocaust remembrance and education in national, as well as international, frameworks and to fight against all forms of intolerance and hatred.”

The Terezin Declaration conveys a sense of urgency that was much less noticeable within the Washington Principles. Due to the advanced age of those persecuted, the education, remembrance, and the social welfare needs of Holocaust (Shoah) survivors and other victims of Nazi persecution require a time of reflection on the need for tribute. The Terezin Declaration addresses the need to review current practices regarding provenance research and restitution and, where needed, to define new effective instruments to improve these efforts. The term “instrument” can be interpreted several different ways, including her, a working body constructed to carry out the mission of the Holocaust Era Assets Conference.

Part three will be posted tomorrow.

Saturday, March 12, 2011 - ,, No comments

A Primer on Nazi-Looted Art Provenance: Emily Blyze on the Guidelines Established by Museums

by Emily Blyze, ARCA Alum, Class of 2009

Legal claims by heirs of Holocaust victims whose art works were looted by the Nazis, and claims by foreign “source” countries for objects they believe were exported in violation of patrimony or export laws, have raised awareness of the need for provenance research in regard to due diligence in acquiring works of art. Provenance research has now become the concern of many persons inside and outside the museum profession. This article will discuss the doctrines that have been created and established as common practice to guide museums to the proper handling and protocol for Nazi-looted art. The focus is on the guidelines of Nazi-Era provenance research, specifically addressing the 1998 Washington Principles and the more recent Terezin Declaration, as well as concentrating on the steps museums have taken as a result of the established guidelines. This is the first of a five part series.

In 2009, a Roman newspaper reported that two fingers and a tooth removed from the corpse of Galileo Galilei had been found and would be displayed in an Italian museum.  In 1737, three fingers, a vertebra, and a tooth had been removed from the astronomer’s body 95 years after his death as his corpse was being moved to a monumental tomb opposite that of Michelangelo in Santa Croce Basilica in Florence. One of the fingers recovered is part of the collection of the Institute and Museum of the History of Science (IMSS), in Florence. The vertebra is kept at the University of Padua where Galileo taught -- until the Vatican branded him a heretic for proposing that the Earth revolved around the sun. The tooth and the other two fingers from the scientist's right hand (the thumb and a middle finger) were coveted by an Italian marquis, enclosed in a container, and passed down from generation-to-generation, until it turned up at auction and was purchased by a private collector, intrigued by the contents but not sure they were Galileo’s relics. The relics were inside an 18th-century blown-glass vase within a wooden case topped with a wooden bust of Galileo. The buyer eventually contacted Paoloa Galluzzi, Director of the IMSS, and other Florence culture officials. Using detailed historical documents, as well as documentation from the family who had owned the body parts, they concluded the fingers and tooth had belonged to Galileo.

This story is an example of how the use of detailed documents from the museum and the family helped identify the ownership history of Galileo’s literal travel through time. The technical museum term for ownership history is “provenance.” When associated with a painting or other work of art, provenance means the history of ownership. Tracing the provenance of a painting traditionally has been a responsibility of museum curators. But that has changed in recent years, with the growth of the Internet, the availability of records from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and publicity surrounding high profile cases of Jewish-owned art stolen by Nazi officials. Legal claims by heirs of Holocaust victims whose art works were looted or otherwise misappropriated by the Nazis, and claims by foreign “source” countries for objects they believe were exported in violation of patrimony or export laws, have raised awareness of the need for provenance research in regard to due diligence in acquiring works of art. Provenance research has now become the concern of many persons inside and outside the museum profession.

Doctrines have been created and established as common practice to guide museums in the proper handling and protocol for Nazi-looted art from 1933 to 1945. The museum community has met over recent years to provide guidelines for Nazi-Era provenance research include the 1998 Washington Principles and the more recent Terezin Declaration. Why now? Awareness through articles, books and conferences during the early 1990s focused attention on this topic. The reunification of Germany, collapse of the Soviet Union, and the declassification of archival documents in the United States, together brought about a major resurgence of interest in Nazi looted art. Books such as Lynn H. Nicholas’s The Rape of Europa published in 1994 and Jonathan Petropoulous’s, Art as Politics in the Third Reich (1996) and The Faustian Bargain (2000) left readers with in-depth research of details and unflinching accounts of the art world during World War II.

A conference on January 19-21, 1995, “The Spoils of War – World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property,” organized by the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, provided the first forum on the subject. The conference dealt with the art and other cultural property that was looted, damaged, and destroyed in vast quantities by the Nazi armed forces and confiscation agencies and the consequences that ensued. Approximately 70 speakers and guest participants representing more than 15 countries discussed publicly their concerns about World War II recovery and restitution. The outcome was the 1997 publication of The Spoils of War by Elizabeth Simpson which reproduces the papers presented at the conference. Seventeen key legal documents that are often referred to, but rarely reproduced, have been added as appendices. The appendices contain relevant provisions of all major international treaties, laws, conventions, protocols, and official statements relating to wartime plunder, restitution, and repatriation.

Part two will be posted later today.

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