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November 5, 2013

Tuesday, November 05, 2013 - , No comments

Gurlitt Art Collection OpEd: An ad-hoc International Art Crime Tribunal for the Munich Gurlitt pictures?

by Judge Arthur Tompkins
arthur.tompkins@gmail.com

The finding of a treasure trove of so-called ‘degenerate’ art in a Munich flat will trigger many challenges, not the least of which is, what to do with all these unique and, inevitably, storied art works? Having, almost certainly, been stolen from their original owners around 70 or so years ago now, they should, each and every one of them, be returned to the heirs of those same dispossessed owners, wherever and whoever they might be.

Doing that, or getting close to doing that, is the great challenge now faced by, initially, the Bavarian and the German federal authorities, but in the end it should not be a challenge faced, nor indeed resolved, by them alone.

Undoing the great harm of the theft of any work of art, and all the more so when, as here, the thefts were all part of the greater evil of the Nazi regime, and perpetrated amid the chaos and uncertainty of gathering and then actual war, is a uniquely international problem. It demands both an international but also a creative answer. Leaving the fate of these precious works of art, and the hopes of the many and various claimants, handicapped as they will by the burdens of lost memories, lost or destroyed evidence, departed or disappeared witnesses, and all the ragged turmoil of the passing of the years, to the vagaries and the lottery of an administrative or judicial process within a domestic legal system is an inadequate response.

What is needed is, in short, an ad-hoc International Art Crime Tribunal.  Such a Tribunal would be assisted by art historians, provenance researchers, advocates to assist the commission and, crucially, claimant advocates and advisers  who will work with claimants so that they can properly and effectively present their claims. By this means the Tribunal could create the kind of neutral ground necessary for the lasting resolution of the disputes that will inevitably arise concerning the art.


The Tribunal should be entrusted with the task of resolving the fate of each work of art, not only by deciding the historical and legal claim or claims to it, but also by explicitly evaluating, and giving equal weight to, the moral claim of the claimant.  This is crucial – in the past claims to art looted in wartime have been undermined or destroyed by an insufficiency of legal evidence to establish prior ownership, where the moral claim for return of looted art is clear.

The Tribunal should have the ability to, and the processes to, adjudicate and determine claims by a binding judgment.  But throughout the claim process, a spectrum of alternative dispute resolution tools should be employed to resolve claims by agreement, and, if appropriate, to resolve claims by agreed solutions, which may enable unresolvable factual or legal issues simply to be left unresolved.

In addition, the Tribunal should seek not only to return the paintings found in the Munich flat, but should also proactively pursue those sold over the years by Herr Gurlitt. Media reports record that he was, from time to time, seemingly in the habit of selling individual works, to defray living expenses and the like. It would be unlikely that any gallery handling the sale of works such as these could claim to be ignorant of the vast history of the Nazi campaign against degenerate art, nor indeed would many collectors be similarly unaware. That paintings such as these would suddenly appear, unannounced and unaccompanied by any real provenance, inevitably places an immediate obligation to seek out such provenance and, in its absence, at the very least to refusing to handle the sale.  The fate of those sold stolen art works should not be ignored.

None of this is new. Precedents for all these aspects of the proposed Tribunal exist, and have in a variety of settings and circumstances been used during the many decades following Hitler’s defeat. The challenges presented by these pictures provide a rare chance, that should not be missed, to bring together many of the valuable lessons learnt over the long years of hard-won, accumulated experience gained in trying to undo the art crimes of the Nazis

There are great challenges here, but also great opportunities. Answering the difficult question, what now to do with these art works, must not, in the answering, create a whole new set of tragedies and a legacy of bitterness and regret. There is enough of that already bound up in this story. 

Judge Arthur Tompkins is a trustee and faculty member of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), and teaches Art Crime in War during ARCA’s annual Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Heritage Protection Studies program in Umbria, Italy. He can be contacted on arthur.tompkins@gmail.com.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013 - No comments

Gurlitt Art Collection OpEd: Too many questions about the recent news of 'Nazi era looted' paintings hoarded by Gurlitt

by Lynda Albertson, ARCA CEO

Sunday afternoon at about 1PM GMT the Museum Security Network received an announcement of a breaking story in Focus, a weekly news magazine published in Munich and distributed widely throughout Germany.   As the nation’s third-largest weekly news magazine, their stories tend to be fact-checked well though they don’t often have breaking news in this sector of the art world.  Scanning the announcement, I had to reread the notice twice before it sunk in.  It seemed like an unbelievable fairytale. 

Customs police had discovered a cache of approximately1,500 once-believed destroyed works of art by many of the masters of classical modernism.   Stuffed in an dark apartment in Schwabing, a borough eleven minutes north of Munich, the investigators found works believed to be attributed to Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Albrecht Dürer, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, and Oskar Kokoschka:  artworks that disappeared off the art world’s radar screen during and shortly after the Second World War. 

During the war, many of these works were declared entartete Kunst (degenerate art) a derogatory term adopted by the Nazi regime that was used to describe much of what was the party classified as “modern art” though this label alone is misleading. The name also became the moniker of a Nazi exhibition in 1937, which featured 114 modernist artists’ works curated to show the work as deviant and without social value.  Interestingly, the exhibition was held in the very city where the cache of missing paintings were to be uncovered.

The "Entartete Kunst" exhibit ran from July 19th through November 30 1937 and presented 650 works by artists deemed to be contaminated by Jewish thought or ideology even if few of the artists who contributed to the modernist movement were actually of Jewish descent.  Branded as an enemy of the state, German painter Max Beckmann, long considered to be one of the towering figures of 20th-century art, is said to have fled to Amsterdam on its opening day.

From Cubism to Dada to expressionism to surrealism, the modernist art aesthetic didn’t fit with the Third Reich’s anti-Semitism, nor with Adolf Hitler's belief that classical Greece and the Middle Ages were the true sources of Aryan art.  Labeled as un-German or Jewish Bolshevist, the regime considered works of art from these genres subversive.  To purge the world of the influence of degenerate artists more than 5,000 works were given this label and confiscated or purchased under duress through forced means during Hitler’s reign.  Many of these works of art have never been seen again. 

Which brings us back to the present and Sunday’s breaking news.  Just how did reclusive octogenarian Cornelius Gurlitt come by his hoarded mother-load of missing art, nestled secretively amidst his stash of past their date of freshness nibbles? Schwabing may be a Bohemian quarter of Munich, but surely 1,500 works of art being moved into a building would have attracted someone’s attention. 

Those interested in art crime and Holocaust-era art losses began searching for more information as soon as the story broke in Germany.  Within 48 hours all the news wires were abuzz. 

What we do know now is that Gurlitt was the sole surviving son of the German-Jewish art dealer and historian Hildebrandt Gurlitt who traded in 'degenerate art'.   Stopped on a train during a routine control, officers searched the younger Gurlitt and him found him to be carrying a suspicious envelope containing 9,000 Euros in large denomination bills, an amount just shy of the legal limit for monetary instruments when traveling between two countries of the European Union. 

Many individuals commenting on this breaking news seem surprised that the German authorities have the legal right to conduct these types of searches on common citizens. In reality, in the age of revolving credit and plastic money,  large sums of undeclared cash would alarm virtually all police and custom border authorities, not just those in within the European Union.  Amounts of currency entering or exiting a country are monitored as a means of investigating tax evasion, drug dealing, terrorist financing and other criminal activities.

In Gurlitt’s case, tax authorities were routinely checking passengers traveling between Germany and Switzerland in an effort to ferret out tax evaders, many of whom have long taken advantage of Switzerland’s tax haven and secretive banking rules. 

As Europeans have seen the rules governing tax treaties begin to change, tax evaders have begun carrying their legal tender back home, presumably to stuff in mattresses.  Some pass over the border with below the limit installments so as to arouse less suspicion, carrying monthly allowances in unassuming envelopes like the one carried by Cornelius Gurlitt. Others bring back larger sums, strapped to their bodies or tucked inside corsets. Last September another German citizen was arrested when it was found that he was carrying 140,000 euros stuffed inside his adult diaper.

But even with his relatively thin envelope, Cornelius set off alarm bells.  He acted nervous and gave authorities an Austrian passport in the name of Rolf Nikolaus Cornelius Gurlitt, born December 28, 1933, in Hamburg - currently residing in Salzburg.   Becoming suspicious, Germany’s tax authorities located his residence in Germany not Austria and subsequently issued a search warrant in the Spring of 2011 seeking entrance to his apartment in Schwabing in hopes of implicating him in tax fraud and embezzlement.  

What they found instead was 1,500 pieces of history, each of which asks as many questions as they answer.   Strangely though, in the two years that have passed since the raid occurred and the artworks was seized, no single list has been made public identifying which works of art were squirreled away in Gurlitt’s hoarder’s heaven.  Forbes magazine listed an abstract figure of $1 billion but until a list is obtained that itemizes the pieces seized, this figure should only be considered speculation.

Berlin Free University has confirmed that Meike Hoffmann of its degenerate art research unit is helping identify these art works but no information has been given as to how long the art historian has been working with authorities on the process or why, given the number of pieces involved, other researchers familiar with modernist painters have not been brought on board. 

What the motive was for father and son to secretly stash away so many remarkable treasures is something we may never fully grasp.  Hildebrandt Gurlitt died in 1956 leaving his son holding the bag and the younger Gurlitt himself is reported to have tersely asked the police why they couldn’t couldn't have waited until he was dead, stating "They would have got their hands on the art anyway."

I for one would like to ask Cornelius how possessing something in secret, like the best of art thief clichés, was more fulfilling for him than being remembered as having returned these works to their public and private owners and undoing the pain and damage caused by his father’s lies and deceit.  From 1956 to today, the thought never crossed his mind to turn these objects over for the greater good?  Surely he realized that his family owed it to the artists, if not to their relatives, to inform the world that these works of art had not been lost after all.

One can speculate that the elder Gurlitt lied about the paintings due to some misconstrued belief that the artworks might be confiscated by the invading Russians when they entered Dresden during the war.  He could likewise have continued to keep them hidden long after the war fearing they would have been shipped outside Germany to one of Russia’s great museums when Germany was still divided.  Similarly, after his father’s death and before the fall of the Berlin wall, Cornelius too may have elected to remain silent.  But why not in the years following Germany’s unification? Why did this man chose to continue to facilitate his family’s deception, living as a recluse off of the random pieces he sold? 

While these questions hold historic curiosity for me personally, I may never know the answers.  Gurlitt’s neighbors in the modest residential building where he lives have not seen the octogenarian for more than a year, though his name is still on the bell.

More important to the art world and hopefully more easily answered is understanding why the Munich tax authorities chose to keep this remarkable find confidential, limiting access to the case to only a chosen cadre. Angela Merkel, herself stated yesterday that "The government were informed about this case a few months ago".

Realizing that who potentially owns these pieces may be a very tangled legal ball of thread to unravel, I also wonder how Focus came to know of the seizure and why they chose to break the story now while the investigation is ongoing.  Do they know something we don't?

Augsburg public prosecutor Reinhard Nemetz has implied that the information was kept secret to facilitate the ongoing investigation.  In a press meeting earlier today he stated that "the prosecution has not gone public. To this day it is - as I said - counterproductive for us to go with the case to the public. We did not save the images. The pictures should not be hung in my office."

Siegfried Klöble, the government director of the Munich customs investigation also added that the investigators are working on the assumption that there may be another cache of paintings in an undiscovered location.

In the meanwhile, all the government’s secrecy and limited number of resources working on the investigation has angered many in art community, myself included.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013 - No comments

Gurlitt Art Collection: German magazines Focus and Der Spiegel Online report on the 'Nazi treasure' of 'masterpiece paintings' found two years ago

Cover of Focus
By Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

On Sunday, November 3, Museum Security Network, under the leadership of the new moderator Alice Farren-Bradley, sent out a Dutch article about a story from the German Focus reporting the discovering of a Nazi treasure of masterpiece paintings worth billions.

The Munich magazine, Focus -- founded in 1993, edited by Helmut Markwort, and a competitor of Der Spiegel -- published this article in its November issue (in German) alleging that two years ago Bavarian customs (Bayerische Zollfahnder) discovered 1,500 works by artists such as Picasso, Chagall and Matisse confiscated during the Third Reich were amongst the trash in the apartment of 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of art historian and dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt. According to Focus, Cornelius Gurlitt raised suspicion carrying a large amount of cash on him on a train between Switzerland and Munich in September 2010. The following spring, Focus writes, investigators searched Gurlitt's apartment in Munich and discovered prints, etchings, engravings and paintings between mountains of rotten food and decades old tin cans. Focus reported that Bavarian customs now have the paintings and that Berlin art historian Dr. Meike Hoffmann is trying to determine the origin and value of the paintings. According to Focus, after the raid in the Spring of 2011, Cornelius Gurlitt sold a painting by Max Beckmann for 864,000 Euros through the Lempertz auction house in Cologne. According to Focus, one of the paintings found was Henri Matisse's Portrait of a Woman from the collection of Parisian art dealer Paul Rosenberg, the grandfather of French journalist Anne Sinclair and American lawyer Marianne Rosenberg.

In The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1994), Lynn H. Nicholas recounts that Dr. Hildebrand Gurlitt, the director of the Zwichau Museum, 'was fired in 1930 for "pursuing an artistic policy affronting the healthy folk feeling of Germany" when he exhibited modern artists. In 1938, Nicholas reports, Hildebrand Gurlitt was one of four 'well-known dealers' appointed to sell art designated as 'garbage' as declared by Nazi Joseph Goebbels and targeted by the Commission for the Exploitation of Degenerate Art. Nicholas identifies Gurlitt as a major buyer at 'the phenomenal sale of the late dentist Georges Viau's Impressionist collection on December 11-14' [1942]. Gurlitt is now 'one of the buyers for Linz' (Hitler's proposed Third Reich museum):
who in addition to the Cézanne [Vallée de l'Arc et Mont Ste.-Victoire] bought three other million-plus pictures: a Corot Paysage composé, Effet gris; a proscribed Pissarro; and for FFr 1.32 million a small Daumier Portrait of a Friend. The truth of the matter was that in France these "degenerate" works were among the hottest items in an overheated market and were being traded and bought to a large degree by those who had condemned them. 
Alas for Gurlitt, both the Cézanne and the Daumier were fakes. The good dentist, it seems, loved to "finish" oil sketches by well-known artists, and copy other works outright. The little Daumier was a copy of the real picture, which had also belonged to Viau, but been sold elsewhere; the Cézanne pure invention. It is now in the study collection of the Musée d'Orsay.
Hildebrand Gurlitt, according to Nicholas, was a trusted agent for Hermann Voss, appointed in March 1943 to purchase art from French Jewish collections.

In a follow up article, Focus asks if there are any other treasures hidden in Munich and notes that empty picture frames in the apartment suggested that Gurlitt had sold paintings from the collection he had hidden in his apartment. And in another article today, Focus readers question the secrecy of the investigation into the found art.

In today's Der Spiegel International online, under the headline "Nazi Plunder: 1,500 Modern Artworks Found in Munich Flat", the Focus investigation is translated into English, adding that Hildebrand Gurlitt was 'hounded' after the Nazis seized power 'because he had Jewish roots':
But thanks to his excellent contacts in the art scene, he was tasked with selling art works to overseas buyers that had featured in the landmark "Entartete Kunst" exhibition of 1937. Organized by the Nazis, it presented 650 works of art deemed "degenerate" that had been confiscated from German museums and effectively stolen from Jewish families. 
After the war, he maintained that the work had all gone up in flames when his home was destroyed in the Dresden firebombing of February 13, 1945. He died in a traffic accident in 1956.
It has now become clear that his extraordinary collection was probably bequeathed to his son, who over the last few decades has allegedly sold an unspecified number of artworks in Germany and Switzerland.
Focus reports that after the raid on the Munich apartment, the collection has been stored under lock and key at the customs office in Garching. An art historian told SPIEGEL ONLINE that she was hired 18 months ago to provide an expert assessment. On Monday, Chancellor Angela Markel's spokesman Steffen Seibert confirmed that the German government had been informed of the matter several months ago, adding that public prosecutors in Augsburg had taken on the investigation. 
If the provenance of the art works cannot be established, Focus writes that they might still be returned to the suspect, because even the legal ownership of work known to have featured in the "Entartete Kunst" exhibition is unclear. For the time being, the man is only being investigated for tax evasion. 
But a statement once given by the art dealer's widow could prove crucial to the case. In the 1960s, she informed the authorities that all of her husband's treasures had been destroyed in the Allied firebombing of Dresden. She was specifically asked about the whereabouts of several paintings formerly owned by the Jewish collector Henri Henrichsen, including one work by Carl Spitzweg. Precisely this painting, and other documents related to it, popped up in the trash-filled Munich apartment. Given proof of a false statement, a legal case could now be used to forfeit the 80-year-old's ownership rights over the works. If the authorities succeed in doing that, the treasures would then be handed over to the state, or more specifically, to the Federal Minister of Finance.

October 29, 2013

Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - ,,,, 1 comment

Tonality and the Delay of George Clooney's film on The Monuments Men

by Fern Smiley, Art Researcher and Consultant on Holocaust Era Cultural Property

George Clooney recently announced that that release of his film, The Monuments Men, will be delayed until 2014. Sharon Waxman, editor of The Wrap and author of LOOT: The Battle Over The Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World (Henry Holt & Company, 2008), ascertains that the cause of the delay is because George Clooney is struggling with the tone of ‘Monuments Men’: “He’d been grappling with balancing the movie’s comic elements with the serious subject matter of World War II and the Nazis’ theft of Europe’s most valuable art.”

Except Clooney has since denied that the delay had anything to do with tonality, insisting that it's all about timing, mostly getting the visual effects right. Even so, Waxman had published on October 23 that a person close to the film claimed, “The hard-to-nail tone was more the issue than the visual effects”.

Context is everything except in Hollywood

The 1964 thriller, The Train starring Burt Lancaster, was inspired by the true story of train No. 40,044 “liberated” outside Paris in 1944 by members of the French Resistance who prevented the train from crossing the border into Germany at the war’s end. In 1964, the year that John Frankenheimer released the film, Hollywood did not acknowledge that the content of the train, priceless artwork, was, in reality, confiscated from Jewish dealers and collectors throughout France and Belgium, but the “Monuments Men” knew.

Lynn Nicolas’ Rape of Europa, the 1995 book which became the benchmark for the subject of Nazi art looting and restitution, reveals the ironic fact that the Jewish American soldier who commandeered the actual train was the son of Paul Rosenberg, the venerated Parisian art dealer. Lt. Alexandre Rosenberg liberated hundreds of French impressionists pictures (many which he recognized that had hung in his parents’ home). Before fleeing France, Paul Rosenberg had tried to safeguard his possessions in a bank in Libourne and a rented chateau in Floirac but both were purloined by Nazi agents.

Robert Edsel’s book of the same name and upon which George Clooney based his film details the recovery starting in 1944 of an astonishing number of works of art stored in salt mines and repositories throughout Europe. For six more years the Monuments Men uncovered deposits; protected, documented, and eventually returned what could be traced to the country of origin to be restituted to the rightful owners.

The meticulously detailed German records of confiscation of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) aided the officers in the recovery. Nancy Yeide, curator of the National Gallery of Art, once commented on the system of ERR plunder: "The very people they were eradicating, they were taking their art and keeping track of whom they take the art from”… except in the case of the M-Aktion, of course, where owners were unidentifiable, since the art and furnishings seized were from abandoned Jewish lodgings, constituting a rich haul of significant and not-so-significant works and objects.

Despite the remarkable recovery work of the "Monuments Men", the whereabouts of tens of thousands of works remained unknown. Meanwhile, according to Marc Masurovsky, founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, the art trade suddenly flourished, and an unprecedented boom in sales occurred throughout a newly infused international art market, ready to embrace stolen property.

Especially in North America

Collections assembled and museums opened during and after the WWII era are still coming to grips with the identification of ‘Holocaust Looted Art’. “The Monuments Men” returned to the US and Canada and Britain after WWII. Some found senior positions in the countries’ museums. Others were academics in the nations’ colleges and universities However, in at least one uncomfortable case, the estate of an ex-Monuments officer contained many seventeen and eighteenth century European works which, because of their unknown provenance, made their ultimate disposition difficult.

American museums have identified 16,000 objects in their possession that may have been seized by the Nazis. Chapter 6 of the 1972 catalogue of The National Gallery of Canada 1938-1955: “Great Years of Collecting” raises eyebrows. This April, Canada’s federal government announced the funding of $200,000 to support the research efforts in six Canadian museums to help establish the provenance of works of art. “It is an important initiative for researchers and heirs around the world who are trying to identify and locate artworks and other cultural artifacts displaced during the Holocaust” said Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, at the Ottawa’s Carleton University conference examining “If not now, when? Responsibility and Memory after the Holocaust.”

It is 2013. George Clooney has a challenge. Waiting a bit longer for a movie, which “means something” according to him, will necessitate a considered approach to the topic. (In the meantime, one could do well by reading the non-fiction book, the above mentioned, Rape of Europa.)

One simply cannot speak about Nazi art looting without referencing the Holocaust. There is international cooperation, legal papers, institutes and conferences examining Nazi art looting and restitution as a component of the Holocaust. News stories run weekly describing successes and failures of claimants, a popularized one, being Elizabeth Taylor’s 2007 pre-emptive lawsuit to keep her Van Gogh from the heirs of Mrs. Margaret Mauthner.

Even in Italy, even by Italians

In Italy, after the first Fascist Racial Laws took hold in the fall of 1938, seizure of works of art from Jews began even without any Nazi presence. Circular n. 43, issued by the Ministry of Education on 4th of March 1939, called upon Royal Customs Offices, responsible for granting export licenses for art and antiquities, to create difficulties and discourage exports of all Jewish emigrants. This was in response to an earlier measure, of the 7th of December 1938, ordering the actual expulsion of all foreign born Jews living on Italian soil, giving them six months to leave the country. According to the Italian scholar Dr. Ilaria Pavan, many of their possessions languished in crates at ports like Genoa. In 1947, the owner of such a crate, containing 558 works of art applied for removal of her property, according to archival material in the Superintendency in Liguria, but then returned them in 1948, their poor condition being in direct relation to the unsuitability of the storage space in which they had been held.

“Sequestrations” in Italian towns and cities took place in earnest, facilitated by the arrest and deportation of its Jewish citizens in 1943/44. A report dated 7 July 1944 from the Superintendency of Florence, Pistoia and Prato concerning removal of all property owned by Jews noted that “lesser objects be sold at Materazzi’s” with added commentary that translates, “it is better to leave as few traces as possible, either of receipts or of the stuff taken from Jews”. In this case sequestration of art was actually undertaken by the Italian local Fascist authorities, not the Nazis.

In the northeast where the German occupying forces carried out confiscations and deportations, records of the Pollitzer, Luzzato, Jesurum, Lescovitch and Morpurgo families, had their art given to local museums that is, after the Nazis skimmed off the best. Musei Civico Trieste and Udine were enriched according to OMGUS post-war documents of Preparations and Restitution Branch, Office of the Military Government (US).

Set in Italy, during this moment of genocide, “Monuments Men, the movie”, cannot sidestep the full historical record. George Clooney, thankfully, is exquisitely placed to increase understanding of Nazi art looting. As lives were threatened or lost by deportation to death camps, stolen private and communal Jewish cultural property shifted from one place to another. At the Italians’ pleading, shipments from museum deposits at risk from bombing were transported by the Germans to the Vatican for safety. Perhaps even the Vatican may have safeguarded objects of Jewish origin, which it still possesses. With the new Pope promising transparency and access to archives, that question may just get answered.

Now that would be a movie.

Ms. Smiley, a former arts volunteer and weblog editor, has advised the Canadian Jewish Congress on their file for Holocaust era art restitution and attended ARCA's Postgraduate Certificate Program in 2011. 
Sources:

Interministerial Commission for Works of Art
In October 1995, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities established this commission to research missing artwork plundered by the Nazis during World War II

The Commissione Anselmi did not carry out a detailed research in state and private museum in order to verify the presence of works of art taken from Jews. The  Interministerial Commission for the recovery of art works assured that no such instance is documented in its records.

Seizure of Possessions of Artistic, Cultural and ReligiousSignificance‎

Research carried out by the Historical Archive of the Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea. Examples of Material Losses suffered by the Jews in the period 1938-1945.
Testimony, Reports,Documents

Series: Records Relating to Monuments. Museums, Libraries, Archives and Fine Arts of the Cultural Affairs Branch, OMGUS, 1946-49 and FA. NARA, RG 260.
Category: JI Allied Commission- Italy. 65 pp, 

Doctor Ilaria Pavan, Scuola Normale Superiore (Pisa)
The Italian Experience. Paper delivered at Christie’s and International Union of Lawyers  “Holocaust Art Looting & Restitution Symposium”.
Milan, Italy. Thursday, June 23, 2011

L’Opera di Ritrovare. Sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry for the Cultural and Environmental Heritage. Italian State Publishing House, 1995.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - , No comments

Today at the National Gallery in Prague: Photos from the Veletrzni Palace

Hall, Veletrzni Palace
(Photo by Dr. Nancy Walker)
Veletrzni Palace
(Photo by Dr. Nancy Walker)





















PRAGUE - Today California educator (and blog subscriber) Dr. Nancy Walker visited the 20th and 21st century art collection at the National Gallery's Veletrzni Palace in Prague. Here's two photos -- "eye candy" for the readers of this blog who haven't been to this "open and fluid" space. In 1975, the original building designed by Oldfich Tyl and Josef Fuchs was destroyed by fire. It was reconstructed in 1995 to house the National Gallery's modern and contemporary art.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - ,,, No comments

"The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, The True Story" showing twice a day this week at the Arclight Pasadena

The documentary, The Missing Piece: Mona Lisa, Her Thief, The True Story, is playing now at the Arclight Theatre in the Paseo Colorado shopping center in Pasadena.

This award-winning documentary, directed and written and produced by the husband and wife team of Joe and Justine Medeiros, is a story of an audacious art theft - Vincenzo Peruggia, an immigrant house painter, walked into the Louvre on a Monday morning and then out with the Mona Lisa under his arm and onto the streets of Paris in late August (a notoriously quiet month in Paris when residents traditionally flee the humidity to the sea and the countryside). For two years Leonardo da Vinci's portrait allegedly of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo escalated in fame as the public wondered if the masterpiece would ever be recovered. The Medeiros team traveled to Peruggia's hometown in northern Italy to meet his daughter, then in her 80s, to find out from her about the man who had stolen La Joconde -- only to find out that her father had died before she turned two years old and she herself had not heard about the theft until she was about to marry. The Medeiros' promised Peruggia's daughter to find out why her father had become an art thief. They studied primary materials, including archival material related to the police investigation, and re-traced Peruggia's actions with his grandson and granddaughter.

The film will screen at noon and 2 p.m. Tuesday (October 29) through Sunday (November 3).

October 28, 2013

Monday, October 28, 2013 - ,, No comments

The Monuments Men: Harry Ettlinger describes finding the stained glass windows of Strasbourg Cathedral in a salt mine

Here's an eight minute video produced by Roberta Newman for the American Jewish Historical Society on activities of The Monuments Men who risked their lives to save art during World War II, including finding art masterpieces in two underground salt mines outside of Heilborn, Germany. This video includes narration by Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger who describes how nitro glycerin came 'within two months' of blowing up Europe's greatest art. "The first job I had was to get all 73 cases of stained glass windows that were taken out of the cathedral of Strasbourg," Mr. Ettlinger recalls. "I was the one who saw to it that all the boxes came to the top and got loaded onto trucks to be shipped to Strasbourg about an hour and a half away."

October 26, 2013

Saturday, October 26, 2013 - ,, No comments

Author Barry Lancet introduces Jim Brodie, antique dealer, as protagonist in debut thriller JAPANTOWN

by Catherine Schofield Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

Author Barry Lancet features a San Francisco antique dealer in Japantown: A Thriller who consults for the police in regards to evidence related to Japanese art and culture. Here's a link to a book review by Steve Sacks for the Washington Independent Review of Books. Between speaking engagements in California, Mr. Lancet spoke to the ARCA blog via email:
Why did you choose an antique dealer as your protagonists' profession?
So that I could talk about the high culture as well as the low points required of the genre. I much prefer the culture, which includes art, but you don't have a mystery/thriller without the low. Very few have both. 
JAPANTOWN and the Jim Brodie series will always have an art theme running through them either as a plot or subplot, or as background.  In JAPANTOWN, as you'll see, art provides color and culture and character, and sometimes provides clues or insights into character.  And then there's the calligraphy, but I'll leave it there to prevent spoilers.
In the books to follow in this series, will there be any art crimes -- thefts, forgeries or even smuggling?
Book 2 also has an art theme woven into the story, and so will the next book. In Jim Brodie's second outing, there are plenty of art crimes -- theft, a long-lost treasure (that is controversial but said to exist by some), an illegal art auction, an actual art object used for very unpleasant political purposes, and more.
Will art historians, art lovers, and collectors learn a lot about Japanese art from your book? Do you strive for authenticity? 
Without a doubt. One of my goals is to pass on some Japanese culture and history with each book, and much of that comes in the form of Japanese art. 
As a book editor for over two decades--and many of them art books--I'm very careful about how I present the culture and the art, and it's all authentic (unless I need to invent something for the story). I've got an About Authenticity section at the end of the book so readers can tell exactly what is accurate in regards to the art, history, culture, and so on.
Mr. Lancet will be speaking at the Northridge branch of the Los Angeles Library on November 2.

Here are a few interviews: NPR / CPR (Capitol Public Radio)interview with Beth Ruyak of INSIGHT (4th button); Out of Ink.  “From the US toJapan and back again – an interview with Barry Lancet”; and “5-in-5: Barry Lancet” by J. Daniel Parra  (Pieces of Tracy).
A wonderful contemporary Japanese tea bowl.  Jim Brodie, the art-dealer protagonist of JAPANTOWN, is working on just such a repair when he receives an urgent phone call from the SFPD.  For more Japanese pieces featured in the book see “Brodie’s Antiques” in the “Japan & More” section of the author’s website (click on the images to enlarge).  Iga tea bowl, with "half moon" gold repair by Shiro Tsujimura (b. 1947– ).

October 23, 2013

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - ,,, 1 comment

Viking jewels stolen from archaeological museum in Sweden

by A. M. C. Knutsson

The Historical Museum in Lund was struck by a theft in the early hours of Tuesday morning. 02.47 the alarm went off and when the police arrived at 02.52 the thief was already gone. The culprit was traced as far as Lund cathedral to which he had made his way on foot. The vicious rain had rinsed away any further trace and it is uncertain whether he continued from the location by car. [1] One man was caught on CCTV but the police has not excluded the possibility that he was working with others. [2] Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Söderholm of the Lund police has said that the thief knew exactly what he was after. In only a minute and a half the man managed to remove the ballistic glass from a window on the ground floor, enter and break open a display case with 8 mm thick Plexiglas, remove half of the display and disappear.[3] The Chief of Security at the Museum, Per Gustafson, exclaimed that even though he is unsure exactly what was taken, a complete inventory will not be possible until the police have finished their investigations -- it appears that the most valuable items were left behind but a significant amount was damaged.[4] Meanwhile, a local newspaper has reported that the man escaped with gold jewelry from the archaeological site of Uppåkra.[5]

The site of Uppåkra, is one of the richest archaeological sites in Sweden. More than 20,000 objects were found when the site was excavated a few years ago. Artifacts of bone, bronze, silver and gold were recovered. Uppåkra is a rare site, giving an insight into the life of the Scandinavian region prior to the period commonly considered the Viking Age. Traces have been found of kings, priestesses, and warriors, Roman as well as Hun. The site was active from 200 AD until around 1000 AD and is unique in Sweden. The first excavations were conducted in the 1930s but not until the 21th century were serious efforts made to excavate the sites. [6]

Söderholm has indicated that professional criminals might have conducted the break-in. He has said that the items might have been stolen in order to sell them on to a collector, or the gold itself might have been the temptation. A professional break-in would indicate the former. [7] This was the first theft in the Sweden’s second largest archaeological museum since the 1950s.[8] Per Gustafson told Tidningarnas Telegrambyra that "People will do whatever it takes to get what they want these days. That is the world we live in."[9]

Sources:
Thomas Lindblad, http://www.alltomvetenskap.se/nyheter/sveriges-rikaste-fyndplats, accessed 22 Oct 2013;
Joakim Stierna - http://www.skanskan.se/article/20131022/LUND/131029851/1012/-/vikingsmycken-stals-fran-museum, accessed 22 October 2013;
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/inbrott-pa-historiska-museet-i-lund/, accessed 22 Oct 2013;
http://www.thelocal.se/50936/20131022/, accessed 22 Oct 2013

[1] Joakim Stierna - http://www.skanskan.se/article/20131022/LUND/131029851/1012/-/vikingsmycken-stals-fran-museum, accessed 22 October 2013
[2] Joakim Stierna – skanskan.se
[3] Joakim Stierna – skanskan.se
[4] http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/inbrott-pa-historiska-museet-i-lund/, accessed 22 Oct 2013
[5] Joakim Stierna – skanskan.se
[6] Thomas Lindblad, http://www.alltomvetenskap.se/nyheter/sveriges-rikaste-fyndplats , accessed 22 Oct 2013
[7] Joakim Stierna – skanskan.se
[8] http://www.thelocal.se/50936/20131022/, accessed 22 Oct 2013
[9] thelocal.se

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - ,,, No comments

Kunsthal Rotterdam Art Theft: Reuters reports "Ringleader in Dutch art theft claims he had inside help"

Credit: Reuters/Bogdan Cristel. The names of those charged with
stealing  paintings from a Dutch museum are seen on a trials
 list at a court in Bucharest October 22, 2013.
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

Reuters' Ioana Patran reports from Bucharest ("Ringleader in Dutch art theft claims he had inside help") on the guilty pleas entered by three defendants for stealing seven paintings from the Triton Foundation while on display last October at the Kunsthal Rotterdam:
Radu Dogaru and two other Romanians have so far pleaded guilty in a Bucharest court to stealing artworks worth tens of millions of euros from Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum in October 2012 - one of the art world's biggest heists in recent years. Two other defendants were expected to testify later while a sixth remains at large and is being tried in absentia. 
On Tuesday, defense lawyer Catalin Dancu told reporters during a break in proceedings his client said he had inside help in the heist. "That person helped them so that the one open door was the way in to the museum," he said. Dogaru refused to reveal the alleged accomplice's identity. "Radu Dogaru has said 'my life and my safety are more important than revealing the person's name'," Dancu said. 
A spokeswoman for the museum, Sabine Parmentier, declined to comment on the issue when contacted by Reuters. 
Asked by a judge whether he had inside help, Dogaru avoided answering and said: "I couldn't say if the theft was ordered. If Dutch (officials) do their job we will learn what happened."

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