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January 25, 2014

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Damage to Cairo's Museum of Islamic Art: Why Does Art Always Take in on the Chin?


By Lynda Albertson, ARCA's CEO

As news of the explosion affecting Cairo’s Museum of Islamic Art has spread and images of the destruction were replicated across social media sites few people or news agencies paused to mention what objects were actually inside one of Egypt’s spectacular museums or talk about the heart of Islam the collection represents. 

Started in 1881, the Museum of Islamic Art initially was housed within the arcades of the mosque of the Fatimid caliph Al-HakimBi-Amr Allah. Commencing with 111 objects, gathered from mausoleums and mosques throughout Egypt, the original collection has grown substantially over the last 130 years. 

Today the objects in the Cairo museum represent one of the most comprehensive collections of Islamic art in the world. With more than 103,000 artifacts housed in 24 halls, its collection celebrates every Islamic period in Egypt covering the Fatimids, the Mamluks, the Abbasids, the Ummayads, the Tulunids, the Ottomans, and the Ayyubids dynasties.

Photo Credit: http://www.discoverislamicart.org
The museum’s glass collection alone counts 5,715 pieces in its inventory.  Some are very rare, others, like this glass vessel fragment, are more commonplace. Notwithstanding, each piece helps visitors and scholars embrace and understand the history of the region and its people.

Some of the glass enameled lamps in the museum come from the mosque of Sultan Hassan who ruled Egypt twice, the first time in 1347 when he was only 13 years old.  One of the most outstanding of these glass pieces is an eight-sided chandelier made up of three layers with a dome-shaped cap and detailed Islamic decorations imprinted on its glass.

Some of the museum’s glass comes from excavations undertaken at Al-Fusṭāṭ, on the east bank of the Nile River, south of modern Cairo.  As the first Muslim capital of Egypt, Al-Fusṭāṭ, was established by general ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in AD 641 and was the location of the province’s first mosque, Jāmiʿ ʿAmr.

Glass vessels, phials and fragments excavated from the former capital and on display at the museum give the world an understanding of the chronology and origin of the Islamic glass industry as well as the history of Islam during the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphates and under succeeding dynasties.

Until the 9th century Islamic glass artisans used the Roman technique of making glass mixing calcium-rich sand and Natron, a salt substance used in Egypt to preserve mummies.  At the turn of the millennium, they opted to use plant ash for the soda component in their formula for glass making and experimented with colors, shapes, techniques, and surface decoration. 

From the piles of shattered glass, pieces of bricks and smashed cases seen in the first images released by Monica Hanna after the bombing it seems that the damage to the museum’s collection may be significant, though for now how significant has yet to be established with detailed clarity.  Talking heads on news sites triage the damage from horrifying to optimistic though without any formal inventory of which rooms were damaged and the objects purportedly on display in that room, it’s hard to know if the pulverized glass we see in initial photos comes from broken windows and collection storage cases or damaged artifacts. 

To rectify that gap in knowledge, museum staff and volunteers worked under difficult conditions and despite safety hazards from a partially collapsed roof before sealing the museum as per security directives.  Their goal: provide an initial assessment and to secure the collection to prevent further damage or possible theft.  Until a formal reporting is given, all we can do is hope that things remain calmer so that the Ministry of Antiquities can salvage as many of the museum's artifacts as possible.

January 24, 2014

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Rembrandt Authentications: National Gallery of Scotland reattributes 2012 donation from Rembrandt to Captain William Baillie

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

In early 2012, Glasgow's Evening Times reported that a wealthy 101-year-old woman, Jessie Steen, had bequeathed a valuable Rembrandt etching to the National Gallery of Scotland. However, the attribution has been changed. In a response to an emailing inquiring about the donation, Dr. Tico Seifert, Senior Curator of Northern European Art, wrote from Edinburgh:
The print bequeathed by Miss Steen in 2012 is a copy after an etching by Rembrandt. It was made by Captain William Baillie (1723-1810), an art dealer and printmaker who made several copies after Rembrandt etchings and owned some of the original plates. The latter he reworked and printed new impressions from, most famously of the ‘Hundred Guilder Print’. As far as we know, Rembrandt’s ‘Landscape with a Hay Barn and a Flock of Sheep’ was copied four times, by different artists, Baillie’s being the second in sequence.

Rembrandt’s etchings were copied a lot, particularly in the eighteenth century, when collectors grew insatiable. Copies partly went for the ‘real things’ but more often they were (cheaper) substitutes for the increasingly rare and expensive originals by Rembrandt.

Unfortunately, we did not receive any information at the time on where or when Miss Steen had acquired this print.

Regarding the value, as an employee of the National Galleries of Scotland, I am not supposed to give valuations and I would kindly ask you to refer to an auction house or dealer in this field.
The work had not yet been photographed.

Thank you to Dr. Seifert and to the registrar at the gallery who promptly responded to this inquiry.

January 23, 2014

Thursday, January 23, 2014 - , 4 comments

Rembrandt Authentications: Curator at Scottish National Gallery discovered red-ink drawing in its collection -- a rare find in a murky world of authenticating Rembrandt's prints

Scottish National Gallery, Rembrandt 98A:
Jan Cornelius Sylvius
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Tico Seifert, a senior art curator for northern European art at the Scottish National Gallery, identified a Rembrandt etching in the collection: the "rare red-ink picture" authenticated by specialists in Amsterdam, reports Edinburgh Evening News, is a portrait of Jan Cornelis Sylvius, a relative of Rembrandt's wife Saskia and godfather to their daughter Cornelia.
He said: “I was going through the boxes of copies of Rembrandt when the first thing that caught my eye is that it is an impression in red ink. “Normally prints, engravings or etchings are produced in black ink. This particular impression is in a brownish red ink which is pretty rare. That was what first made me hesitate going through to the next one.
“I checked the handbooks for what kind of copy this might be and they said the copies are always in reverse. 
“When I saw it wasn’t, I thought this is most likely not a copy.”
The Scottish National Gallery reports that the etching's provenance is unknown. In the collection posted online, the gallery shows 12 other works by Rembrandt, including an oil on panel of Hannah and Samuel; and two oils on canvases, A Woman in Bed; and Self-Portrait, aged 51.

"The National Galleries of Scotland hold about 100 etchings by Rembrandt, several of which are of superb quality," Dr. Seifert wrote in an email to the ARCAblog.

In 2010, Jenna Johnson for the Washington Post reported in "Etching found at Catholic University may be a Rembrandt" the story of the college's president discovering a framed etching and the process and valuation of a possible Rembrandt work. In July 2012, Dalya Alberge reported for the guardian in "Rembrandt drawing found in Scottish attic" that Christie's would sell the newly discovered artwork.

Here's a link to the Rembrandt Research Project, chaired by Ernst van de Wetering, 'widely accepted as the Rembrandt expert. Mr. van de Wetering authenticated a Rembrandt painting from Buckland Abbey in Devon in 2013. The DVD, Out of the Shadows: Hidden Masterpieces, is produced with the Rembrandt Research Project and the University of Delft. And this video here explains how Rembrandt sold his plates and later drawings were made in the 18th century.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has published on the questions of authenticity in regards to Rembrandt's work. 

At the 2011 Art Crime Conference in Amelia, photographer and researcher Sarah Zimmer spoke about the event of a missing or lost Rembrandt etching in "The Investigation of Object TH 1988.18: Rembrandt's 100 Guilder Print."

The Cleveland Art Museum exhibited "Rembrandt in America" in 2012, discussing what is and what isn't a Rembrandt. The exhibit also visited North Carolina and Minnesota as the 'largest collection of authentic Rembrandt paintings'. The Morgan Library and Museum also showed an exhibit, Rembrandt's World, of the artist's drawings from the Clement C. Moore collection.

In August 2012, a Norwegian art gallery lost an Rembrandt etching in the mail (Reuters, "Norwegian gallery loses a Rembrandt in the mail," August 23, 2012).

In this article, "The 'kissing couple' bride: A remarkable war story remembered", by Debora van Brenk in the London Free Press, a story is told that an 'enterprising wife arranged for delivery of some Rembrandt etchings to high-placed German officers' to free her husband during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands.

January 19, 2014

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Mark Durney's "Reevaluating Art Crime's Famous Figures" published in the International Journal of Cultural Property

The International Journal of Cultural Property published "Reevaluating Art Crime's Famous Figures" by Mark Durney in its May 2013 issue.

Mark Durney, the creator of the ARCA Blog and of Art Theft Central, studied history (undergraduate) at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, and archaeology (masters) at the University College of London. Noah Charney interviewed him in 2011. Mark spoke about the importance of "Collection Inventories" at ARCA's International Art Crime Conference that same year. Mark previously served as ARCA's Business and Admission's Director.

Here's the abstract:
This article seeks to demonstrate that the figures used to describe the size and scope of cultural property crimes—that it is a $6 billion illicit industry and that it ranks among the third or fourth largest criminal enterprise annually—are without statistical merit. It underscores the ambiguities inherent in the figures and uses the 2003 theft of the Duke of Buccleuch’s painting by Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna of the Yarnwinder, to illustrate the difficulties related to establishing monetary estimates for cultural property crimes. It calls for a more empirical approach to measuring the magnitude of the problem on the part of cultural property crime experts. Finally, it examines the reporting methods of the world’s largest cultural property crimes law enforcement agency, the Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale, in order to provide a model for others to follow in the effort to communicate the severity of the problem and to increase its financial, social, and political support.
The article discusses cultural property crime data, the "multibillion dollar industry", and the value of Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna of the Yarnwinder stolen in Scotland in 2003 and recovered four years later:
The example of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder, which was stolen in a daytime raid from Drumlanrig Castle, Scotland, in 2003 and recovered in 2007 underscores the difficulty with estimating an object’s value in order to account for its contribution to the annual illicit cultural property trade figure. For tax reasons, the Duke of Buccleuch insured the painting for only a quarter of its 1996 valuation—£15 million.27 Other estimates for the painting’s value published by the media ranged from £20 to £50 million.28 Immediately after the theft, the Buccleuch’s insurer offered a £200,000 reward, which was later increased to £1 million. In 2007, Robert Graham and John Doyle, private investigators who operated a stolen property recovery website called Stolen Stuff Reunited, were contacted by mysterious intermediaries known only as J and K, who had access to the stolen da Vinci. According to court records, the painting had been used as collateral for a £700,000 property deal and the individuals, who accepted the painting as security sought to recoup their money. Graham and Doyle contacted their solicitor Mar- shall Ronald. Ronald involved Glasgow solicitors Calum Jones and David Boyce in order to ensure the recovery dealings were legal under Scottish law. Ronald, on behalf of his clients, negotiated with the intermediaries to return the painting for £350,000. During the recovery process he notified the Buccleuch’s insurance loss adjustor, Mark Dalrymple, in order to return the painting through an informal mediation process.29 In negotiations between Dalrymple and John Craig, who was an undercover police officer posing as the Buccleuch’s representative, Ronald requested a total of £4.25 million as a reward and to cover his and his clients’ expenses.30 However, before negotiations evolved any further, police arrested Ronald, Graham, Doyle, Jones, and Boyce and charged the group with conspiring to extort £4.25 million from the Buccleuch family for the painting’s return.31 After an eight- week trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, a not-proven verdict was returned on Ronald, Graham, and Doyle. Both Jones and Boyce were found not guilty of the same charge. It was later revealed by the Scottish Legal Aid Board that £984,636 was paid to cover legal expenses of all the accused, which was a loss incurred by the Scottish taxpayer.32 

As illustrated by the case of the Madonna of the Yarnwinder, illicit art’s monetary value can be based on its insurance claim, its value as collateral in illicit transactions, or the cost of its recovery. Also, its value can be based on its estimated value. In this example, the painting’s estimated value would be difficult to determine due to the fact that it is a rare work by one of history’s most famous artists and has not been on the market since the eighteenth century when it was first acquired by the Buccleuch family. 
In the section, "New Methods of Measuring the Problem", Mr. Durney discusses Italy's Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale:
Italy’s Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale, which is the largest cultural property law enforcement unit in the world and has been very successful at policing such crimes since 1969, maintains a vast stolen cultural property database called Leonardo.45 The Carabinieri publish an annual report titled Attivita’ Operativa, which provides theft and recovery data as well as con- tributes insights into its cultural property protection efforts over the past year.46 The Carabinieri’s success at recording, publishing, and analyzing crime data is likely due to the fact that it has a uniform reporting system in place across its 14 regional units. In order to measure the unit’s performance, it compares the latest data with that from the previous year. While the annual report includes a mon- etary estimate of the total value of cultural objects recovered or seized, it supplements the data with more significant figures including those related to cultural objects recovered or seized by the Carabinieri.47 Also, the Carabinieri’s annual report incorporates the number of individuals referred to the judicial system from its actions; a detailed account of its preventive activities carried out, such as the review of businesses, markets, and fairs, as well as the inspection of the safety and security measures at museums, libraries, state archives, and archaeological sites; and a summary of its training activities with domestic and foreign law enforcement organizations.48

In addition to providing in-depth recovery data that is even segmented by re- gion, the Carabinieri’s report includes annual theft data. For example, there were 817 cultural property thefts reported in 2010 to the Carabinieri.49 The juxtaposition of the reported thefts against the number of objects recovered or seized pro- vides statistical evidence that leads one to conclude that a substantial number of thefts are underreported or unnoticed. This method of reporting better conveys the severity and scope of the illicit cultural property trade than any dollar amount could achieve.

January 18, 2014

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Unsolved Museum Thefts: The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

PARIS - My visit to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris yesterday reminded me of another museum with not one but two unsolved thefts.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts was robbed in 1972 and had 18 paintings stolen by three thieves who have never been convicted and the paintings have not been seen since the thieves failed to show up to collect a ransom for the kidnapped paintings (you can read about Canada's largest theft here).

In October 2011, a man walked out of the museum in Montreal with two objects from antiquity.

Can you think of other unsolved museum thefts?

How about the 1990 theft of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?

Those are the mysteries that bother me the most -- what are your most problematic museum thefts?

January 17, 2014

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Postcard from Paris: Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris -- galleries restructured and permanent collection displayed away from open windows

Museum view of Eiffel Tower & Siene
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin,
ARCAblog Editor-in-Chief

PARIS - Musée d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris has undergone a restructuring of its galleries since a thief stole five paintings -- never recovered -- in May 2010. The biggest visible change to visitors today is that the long downstairs gallery facing windows overlooking the Seine and the Eiffel Tower is now a big open space with large, immobile paintings too big to be carried away by one person.
Open gallery with large paintings

Four years ago, portable works by modern paintings hung in the lower level that had access to an outdoor terrace and down steps to the street that runs south along the Seine. Admission to the museum, then and now is free, so it would not have cost a prospecting thief any money to scope out the small works that were be easily removed in the early morning hours while security personnel waited weeks for a part required to fix the security
Shiny lock, sharp shutters
alarm.
Entrance to the permanent collection

Today the museum appeared to have installed large outworks in the area that had been violated, tore down the wall dividers, and opened up the space. The inside metal shutters vulnerable in the break-in appeared well-maintained and locks nickel sharp.

The permanent collection is now displayed away from the large floor to ceiling windows into small rooms carved out of the middle of the building. More paintings, including some by the artists Picasso and Matisse who's works were stolen, appeared to be on display than even two years ago. This afternoon, with the bookstore full of customers and visitors eating and drinking at the cafe, this museum appeared to have no visible scars of the theft. However, I still can't bear to believe that those paintings, including the one by Braque that I so admired, were really thrown in the trash. 


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The Art Newspaper reports rumours that Britain is trying to sell antiquities of 'disgraced dealer Robyn Symes'


In today's article in The Art Newspaper online, "Italy threatens to sue UK firm over ancient 'loot'", Cristina Ruiz and Javier Pes write about the 'Government's liquidator rumoured to be selling disgraced dealer Robin Symes's antiquities'.
Italy is demanding the immediate return of a cache of antiquities stored in London and warning that if it does not receive information about the status of the collection within 30 days, it may sue the firm responsible for the objects. 

Italy’s state legal counsel was planning to send, this month, a final warning to the liquidator responsible for the assets of the disgraced antiquities dealer Robin Symes, who was declared bankrupt in 2003. Italy’s letter includes a detailed list of around 700 ancient objects, including sculptures and jewellery, that Italy is claiming because it believes they were taken from its territory illegally. The action is taking place amid rumours that the liquidator, the British firm BDO, is selling the material in the Middle East on behalf of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which is attempting to recoup tax owed by Symes’s firm, Robin Symes Ltd, which is now in liquidation. If BDO fails to respond to Italy’s warning by the end of the month with detailed information on the status of each item on the list, Maurizio Fiorilli, Italy’s state legal counsel on the Symes case, will notify the public prosecutor at the Criminal Tribunal in Rome.
According to University of Cambridge's Dr. Christos Tsirogiannis (in an email to the ARCAblog) that corrected a quote in the article:
It is a scandal for the British government, IF antiquities from the Symes warehouses are being offered for sale. At the moment I do not have any information that the British government is already selling antiquities from these warehouses. But, the delay to send to Italy the antiquities that have certainly been identified as illicit is already scandalous.
Dr. Tsirogiannis' work in helping the Greek police in cultural ministry in investigating the source of antiquities that passed through the dealership of Symes is documented in the book by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities from Italy's Tomb Raiders in the World's Greatest Museums.
  
Here's a 2008 article in Britain's Telegraph by Alastair Smart introducing readers to Maurizio Fiorilli. And here's an earlier post this year about the antiquities lack a legal collecting history that have been subscribed to Symes.

January 16, 2014

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Document Theft at the Maryland Historical Society: The Thief that Gives Back?

by Kirsten Hower

Normally when something is stolen from a cultural institution, the odds of the objects being returned is minimal, and often nothing is returned.  It is nearly unheard of for the objects to be returned…let alone for additional objects to be brought along in the return.  Oddly enough this is the case with museums in Maryland and New York, and document thieves Barry H. Landau and Jason James Savedoff.

Over the course of eight months, Landau and Savedoff stole ten thousand historical documents from cultural institutions such as the New York Historical Society and the Maryland Historical Society.  One of the documents stolen is a letter from Benjamin Franklin to John Paul Jones, a naval fighter in the American Revolution, dated April 1, 1780 which was stolen from the New York Historical Society.  The thousands of other historical documents included letters and other written pieces by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. 

It was not until July 2011 that both Landau and Savedoff were caught sneaking documents into specially tailored coats at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore, Maryland.  Had it not been for the vigilant observations of one of the Society’s employees, the two men may never have been caught and the extent of their thefts never uncovered.  However, they were caught and subsequently charged for the thefts resulting in a seven year prison sentence for Landau and a one year prison sentence for Savedoff, who was released this past November.


What is particularly interesting about this case was that once the documents were returned, additional documents were discovered.  The “Baltimore Sun” reported that ten percent of the returned documents do not have traceable origins and are therefore homeless for the time being.  After temporarily staying at the National Archives in College Park, the documents were taken to the Maryland Historical Society in August where they will remain until they are claimed by their rightful owners.

News source:
Jessica Anderson, The Baltimore Sun, "Theft case leaves additional documents at Maryland Historical Society," December 31, 2013

January 15, 2014

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Postcard from Paris: The Rodin Museum highlights the sculptor's antiquities collection and its influence on his work

Hotel Biron remains under renovation
by Catherine Schofield Sezgin,
 ARCA Blog Editor-in-Chief

PARIS - The Musée Rodin's exhibit "Rodin, the Light of Antiquity" highlights the the relationship the sculptor had with his collection of about 6,000 antiquities -- most of them fragments of Etruscan, Greek and Roman sculptures -- that he collector over a period of 25 years. Rodin's deal to donate his works included his plan to keep his antiquities collection intact and on display at the Hotel Biron and its gardens.

Today the Hotel Biron, which houses the museum's permanent collection, was closed and a big tent dominated the rear garden.

The exhibit (which forbid photographs) points out the influence of August Rodin's trip to Italy in 1875-1876 and his studies (and drawings) of antiquity fragments such as The Belvedere Torso on The Thinker (who sits on a capital), sayiing that Rodin realized 'that the fragment was as powerful and complete as the whole'. When Rodin purchased "Heracles resting", he began to plan to one day open an antiquities museum and constructed a building at his home outside of Paris. Rodin felt influenced by the Greek sculptor Phidias and the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo (the exhibit has two plaster casts of The Dying Slave and The Rebellious Slave which Rodin could visit at the Louvre. Rodin's female figures were inspired by the Venus de Milo (Aphrodite). Rodin collected more than one hundred fragments of Roman Venuses (Rodin opposed the idea of restoring the Venus de Milo, preferring the original Greek sculpture as it was). Rodin read Ovid and Apuleius and created works using casts from ancient objects and fitting in his sculptures.

The exhibit displayed Rodin's Iris-Aphrodite, a 2nd century encrusted bronze; The Rodin Cup, an Etruscan object; and the Canosa vase Rodin admired from the Louvre. [Here's a link to an article, "An Etruscan Imitation of An Attic Cup", on the Rodin Cup in the Journal of Hellenistic Studies.]

BeauxArts éditions published (French only) the exhibit catalogue, "Rodin, La Lumière de l'antique". The bookstore also sells "Rodin, Antiquity Is My Youth" (2002, edited by Bénédicte Garnier). The exhibit closes on February 16.

January 14, 2014

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Postcard from Paris: Crowds gather to view last day of Kahlo-Rivera exhibit at Musée de l'Orangerie

The Golden Sphere, Jardin des Tuileries
by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

PARIS - I had not anticipated that while I idly photographed James Lee Byars' "Golden Sphere" (1992-2012) in the center of the fountain of the Jardin des Tuileries that dozens of visitors were lining up for the last day of the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibit, Art in Fusion, at the Musée de l'Orangerie.

After 45 minutes standing outside in the cold that must be ignored (an ambulance arrived to pick up a woman who had collapsed near the front of the line), hanging up my winter coat, and subtly protecting my place in the ticket line from encroachers, the cashier told me that she had run out of six-day Paris Museum Passes. The cost of a two day and a four day pass -- her available inventory -- would cost a total of 98 euros, almost 50 percent more. I deliberately held up the line, waiting for her to make an offer, she didn't, and so, just so I could get her response for you, I made the suggestion: "You could sell me the two-day and the four-day pass for the same price since I waited to purchase the six-day pass." And her response: "I am not a manager, I cannot make that decision."
Long line waiting for museum to open
I wasn't in California where I would have demanded to speak to her supervisor, so I just let it go -- we were, after all, in Paris. Next time I plan to speak very loudly in my awkward French and see if the customer service improves.

The Kahlo-Rivera exhibit told the story of the couple's dramatic and estranged relationship, showed the influence Spain and France had on his work, how physical and emotional pain influenced hers. In 1939, Kahlo and Rivera visited Paris:
Frida goes to Paris where she takes part in the "Mexique" exhibition, organised by Breton and Duchamp at the Galerie REnou & Colle. she meets a number of Surrealist painters, as well as Picasso, but is very disappointed with Parisian intellectual circles. At the end of the year, she and Diego are divorced. [From the exhibit]
The exhibit had detailed how he had slept with her sister, and she had suffered through numerous miscarriages. Right by this plaque was a "Portrait de Frida Kahlo dormant" (1939) by photographer and painter Dora Maar (1907-1997), Picasso's former muse and lover, who had suffered depression when the relationship with Pablo ended.

I cleansed my artistic palate with a visit to Monet's Water Lilies (a sign clearly stated no phones or cameras) under natural sunlight. The museum's audio guide described the efforts to protect Monet's masterpiece:
When the Water Lilies were inaugurated in 1927, Impressionism was no longer fashionable and the public did not flock to see Monet's masterpiece. Then, after years of neglect, these rooms were the most damaged by shells during the liberation of Paris. Their renovation in the 1960s modified the original design, notably doing away with the anteroom and replacing it with a staircase. But the work undertaken between 2000 and 2006 restored them to their original splendor and they are now as Monet originally imagined them.

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