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November 11, 2013

James "Whitey" Bulger to be Sentenced to Prison Thursday

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

More than two years after the FBI apprehended James "Whitey" Bulger in Santa Monica, the 84-year-old convicted murderer will be sentenced Thursday to prison for the rest of his life -- without ever leading investigators to the paintings stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.

Both the Gardner's security director and investigator, Anthony Amore, and the federal prosecutor who put Bulger away, Brian T. Kelly, have said publicly that Bulger was not connected to the heist in any way and is not considered a suspect.

Shelley Murphey, reporter for the Boston Globe and co-author with Kevin Cullen of Whitey Bulger: America's Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt that Brought Him to Justice (W.W. Norton & Company, 2013) summarizes Bulger's legal status here in "'King of Bulger's victim's set to speak out in court" (Boston Globe, Nov. 11):
In August, following an eight-week trial, jurors found Bulger participated in 11 murders while operating a sprawling criminal enterprise from the 1970s through the 1990s that trafficked in cocaine and marijuana; extorted drug dealers, businessmen, and bookmakers; and corrupted FBI agents and other law enforcement officials. He was convicted of 31 counts of racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and weapons possession. 
In a sentencing memorandum filed last week, prosecutors said Bulger “has no redeeming qualities” and faces a mandatory term under federal sentencing guidelines of life in prison, followed by another life sentence for possessing machine guns and another five-year term for possessing handguns.
In the biography of Bulger by Murphey and Cullen, a word search for "Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum", "art theft",  or "museum" resulted in none of the speculation found in previous years about Whitey's possible knowledge of what had happened to the ISGM paintings. [I did read in their book that in 1996 Bulger and his companion Cathy Greig walked into an residential building on Third Street in Santa Monica, lied about their identities on an application form for a rent-controlled apartment, then moved into a two-bedroom unit at $837 a month. When I lived in Santa Monica in the early 1990s, everyone I ever knew had to know someone to get a unit due to the fierce competition for affordable beach housing.]

In Ulrich Bosert's 2009 The Gardner Heist, rumors retold include that Whitey Bulger approached someone in Florida to sell the Gardner loot for $10 million and that Bulger had shipped the stolen paintings to the IRA in Ireland.

November 9, 2013

Saturday, November 09, 2013 - , No comments

Gurlitt Art Collection: HARP Calls on the German Government to Immediately Disclose a Detailed and Complete Inventory of the Cornelius Gurlitt Collection and Set Up a Commission to Hasten Restitution of Nazi-Looted Artworks to Holocaust Victims and Their Heirs

Washington, DC, USA – November 8, 2013 - The Holocaust Art Restitution Project ( HARP), based in Washington, DC, chaired by Ori Z. Soltes, has called on the German Government to immediately publish a full, detailed and complete inventory of the Cornelius Gurlitt art collection, and to set up a Commission to hasten the restitution process of Nazi-looted artworks to Holocaust victims and their heirs.

Following the disclosure by the weekly magazine Focus that the German Government has been in control of the Cornelius Gurlitt collection for several years, HARP, through its legal counsel, sent a letter to the German Ministry of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, calling on the German Government to immediately disclose a full, complete, and detailed inventory of this collection, and to establish a Commission to hasten the process of identification and restitution of any Nazi-looted artwork found in this collection.

Any delay in implementing these steps would constitute grave injury to both the art market which requires that full and complete diligence be performed on any transaction, and to Holocaust survivors who have been looking for their artworks since 1945,” the letter states, which was also shared with Reinhard Nemetz, the Head of Augsburg State Prosecutor’s Office in charge of investigating Cornelius Gurlitt.

HARP is a not-for-profit group based in Washington, DC, and chaired by Ori Z. Soltes, dedicated to the identification and restitution of looted artworks require detailed research and analysis of public and private archives in North America. HARP has worked for 16 years on the restitution of artworks looted by the Nazi regime.  HARP was notably involved in the "Portrait of Wally" case, where a Schiele painting was seized by the U.S. Government, as well as in the restitution of an “Odalisque”, a painting by Henri Matisse, to the Rosenberg family.

HARP is advised and represented by the Ciric Law Firm Firm, PLLC in New York, USA.

Gurlitt Art Collection: Reuters Video: 'Cornelius Gurlitt who hid 1,400 art works was a tragic figure'

In this November 8 Reuters video posted on YouTube, Wolfgang Gurlitt in Barcelona says that his cousin Cornelius Gurlitt, whose collection of 1,400 artworks was seized from his Munich apartment by Bavarian authorities in February 2012 in an investigation regarding tax evasion, only sold paintings to support himself.

"He could have sold it [the art collection] in all these 60 years," Wolfgang Gurlitt said. "He could have sold the Picassos and all these famous paintings to a museum, to any rich people, so he was not interested in making money -- he was just interested in making money to make his own living."

Gurlitt Art Collection: Images of the FOCUS Magazine 'Exclusive'

First page of FOCUS article
The second half of the front page spread




















Jacobiene Kuijpers (ARCA '13) kindly scanned images of the FOCUS article that broke the news of the 'discovery' of the Hildebrand-Cornelius Gurlitt art collection. Sascha Gleckler, an American living in Berlin, reviewed the article, translating from German to English. Ms. Gleckler, who took an art law class while earning her degree from Stanford Law, said that until this week she had not been aware of the weekly publication FOCUS but that the investigation on the Gurlitt collection lead the evening news on television last Sunday in Berlin. "How did this remain a secret while they were researching these paintings?" Ms. Gleckler asked. "And how will they deal with what started as a tax issue and is now leading into issues about restitution for Holocaust looted art?"

The issue of this week's FOCUS carries a front page exlusive of "Der Nazi-Schatz", The Nazi Treasure, described as a sensational discovery after 70 years of 1500 lost works of art by artists including Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, and Dürer with a value that might be worth more than one billion euros. Credit at the end of the 11-page article (exclusive of advertising) is given to Markus Krischer and Thomas Roell. Here's a link to a German television interview with Mr. Krischer.

Third page
Fourth page

Focus-Research described how Cornelius Gurlitt's trips on the train with large amounts of cash aroused the suspicion of Bavarian custom authorities and lead to a search of his dirty and cluttered apartment in Munich and the discovery of about 1,500 artworks. The article includes a summary of the history of degenerate and confiscated art during the National Socialist era.

Fifth page
Sixth page
The article includes images of paintings by Franz Marc (fifth page) and a photo of the legendary Parisian art dealer Paul Rosenberg standing next to a painting by Matisse. On the sixth page is an image of Max Beckmann's 'Lion Tamer' (in German, "Löwenbändiger").

The seventh page includes a photo of Cornelius Gurlitt's residence and photos of artists on file.

Seventh page
Eighth page

Gurlitt Art Collection: Images of FOCUS Magazine 'Exclusive' Continued


The article includes information about three art dealers who had handled (bought and sold) degenerate paintings during the Nazi regime: Karl Buchholz, who opened a gallery in New York City and conducted business from Spain to Romania for Joseph Goebbels; Ferdinand Möller, an international dealer in Expressionist paintings who made a lot of money selling confiscated (including degenerate) -- he held back a lot of expensive paintings and pictures for himself and after the war he showed the invoices that he had bought them for himself (FOCUS); and Bernhard Böhmer, a sculptor and a dealer, who as an associate for National Socialism became a millionaire before committing suicide at the end of the war.



November 8, 2013

Friday, November 08, 2013 - No comments

Gurlitt Art Collection: NPR: "US Documents Raise Questions on Munich Art Hoard (Hildebrand-Cornelius Gurlitt Art Collection)

Here on Nov. 7, National Public Radio (NPR) published online an article by the Associated Press on the subject of the relationship with Hildebrand Gurlitt and the Allied interrogators after the war ended.
In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, the American military seized 20 boxes of art from German dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt in Aschbach in December 1945, according to documents located by The Associated Press in the U.S. National Archives in Washington.
Noted excerpts:
American investigators at the time expressed doubts about Gurlitt's claims to the works, but they eventually decided that in most cases he was the rightful owner. So on Dec. 15, 1950, the U.S. returned 206 items to him: 115 paintings, 19 drawings and 72 "various other objects."
The three paintings that the Americans returned to Cornelius' father in 1950 and which have showed up in the Munich trove are Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on the Beach;" Otto Dix's self-portrait and an allegorical painting by Marc Chagall.
Christoph Zuschlag, an art historian at the University of Koblenz, said the American documents indicated U.S. investigators suspected right after the war that Gurlitt may have been in possession of looted art.
He said if German authorities published a full list of the find at the apartment, then experts could determine more quickly whether Gurlitt was the rightful owner.
"As a historian, I have to say pictures and information about all the art has to be published online immediately," he said. "A whole team of experts should work on this discovery and try to answer all the remaining open questions."
Spokeswoman Hillary Kessler-Godin said the Claims Conference already has an online database of 20,000 looted objects based on the Nazis' own records that is searchable by owner, artist and other keywords. She said that could be easily used to determine if there are any claims on the Gurlitt collection.
"Our experts believe that a number of the works found in Munich could be in this database," Kessler-Godin said in an email. "Keeping the list a secret hinders the process of expeditious restitution."

November 7, 2013

Gurlitt Art Collection: Excerpts from the 1945 Allied Interrogation via Lootedart.com

Dr. Hildebrant Gurlitt subjected his 208-piece art collection to scrutiny by the U.S. Army in 1945 and filed the necessary paperwork for its return five years later, according to information provided by The Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945's Lootedart.com, "Hildebrand Gurlitt: Allied Interrogation June 1945; List of Artworks in his Collection Returned to him by the Allies in 1950 and the Related Documentation":
On 8-10 June 1945 Hildebrand Gurlitt was interrogated at Aschback by Lieutenant Dwight McKay of the US Third Army about his activities as a Nazi art dealer. The statement resulting from that interrogation, in which, inter alia, he denied ever handling seized art in France, and in which he lists some of the sources of acquisition of the works in the collection, is available here.
The "translation of sworn statement written by Dr. Hildebrand Gurlitt" -- declassified in 1977 -- includes a life history (his grandfather Louis Gurlitt was a landscape painter) and his military service (officer of infantry from 1914 to 18) and his job as director of the City Art Gallery in Zwickau 1925-1930 when he 'incurred the enmity of the Nazis and was dismissed'.
After my dismissal in Zwickau (1930) I gave lessons of history of art in the Academy of Applied Art in Dresden, published a book about Kathe Kollwitz (a then famous German woman-artist) public debates against Nazi-art and wrote articles for the Vossische and Frankfurter Zeitung. 
1931 I was called to Hamburg as director of the Kunstverein. I arranged exhibitions, lectures about modern art, unpopular with the Nazi movement. Made an exhibition of modern English art, one of modern German art in Sweden, made trips to England and Scandinavia. Was dismissed in 1933 on account of my Anti-Nazi feelings. Got denounced because I had the flagpole of the Gallery sawed off, in this way avoiding the showing of the swastica flag.
After Keunstverain Hamburg, Dr. Gurlitt opened an art gallery in 1934 where he 'went on trips for great German Museums. 1939 I was in Switzerland, then in Paris.' Dr. Gurlitt explains that he had to 'decide between the war or work for the museums.' He was 'called by Dr. Voss' (who had been 'appointed as successor to the directorship of the museum in Dresden and as commissioner for the Fuhrermuseum in Linz') 'to help him with the buying of paintings in Paris.' He explains the the 'purchases in Paris were perfectly normal':
I had given to me the photos of paintings and mostly Dr. Voss bought them wihtout having seen them, entirely on the strength of my descriptions. Any force whatsoever was not used. If Dr. Voss thought the pictures to (sic) expensive, he did not buy them.
He later says: 'I have never bought a picture, which was not offered voluntary to me. If paintings were pointed out to be as not for sale, I did not even ask for the price. I did not need to do so as I had enough offers.'
How it was with pictures from Jewish collections 
As I heard, the Jewish owned art treasures in France were seized by a law, but which I have never seen with my eyes. I know that the German Ambassador used a Baroque Writing desk which came from the Rothschild collection. I also saw marvellous Franch drawings from the 18th century in the rooms of the German Embassy, which were said to come from the same source. It was told to me, that there existed in paris a palace in which the Jewish art possessions were collected and where they were divided among the different officials. I never went to this building. They told me that a certain Mr. Lohse, who was acting for Goring, was the chief of this house. I avoided meeting this man and met him only once in an exhibition without my intention. I always avoided to meet high Nazi-Officials in Paris. I was only once to a large reception in the embassy together with hundreds of people. There was rumor that the Gestapo bought under pressure, paintings from private or dealers, which I heard very often, but I never could prove it or even get reliable information, as I otherwise should have gone after such an accusation and would have informed Prof. Voss privately. I did notice indeed that I was not shown many pictures, which were reserved for other dealers.
According to Dr. Gurlitt, he made 10 trips to Paris between the summer 1941 and June 1944: 'In total I acquired about 200 paintings in France and have given them to museums.' His 'income increased steadily, because I was very active and developed my business more and more.' As to his 'personal fortunes' he includes 'the safe deposit box of the Dresdner Bank' of 'silver and the paintings of my father and also the pictures of my deceased sister'. He denies having any paintings from the Dresden Museum in his possession: 'All pictures I brought with me from Saxonia are the personal property of my family or myself. I have never in the house pictures of other owners. '
I was told, that I was a poor man before the Nazis came and that I now have money and a whole truck-load of paintings. To that I have to reply, that I was well off as director of the Kunstverein Hamburg with a monthly salary of 600 R.M. and a commission on every picture sold. I had an apartment of 12 rooms, a very large library and a nice art collection. I had a good future ahead of me and would inherit one day the house of my mother in Dresden, with the library and collections of my father, his personal fortune and the contents of 14 rooms filled with antique furniture. Dismissed by the Nazis, I became an art dealer, very much against my purely scientific intentions.
In the list of 'Contents of opened boxes in Castle Aschback belonging to H. Gurlitt' it is written that he purchased a Courbet from Engel in Paris for 150,000 French francs; that a Liebermann was 'from the possession of my father who bought it in Rome'; a Picasso bought from the artist in Paris in 1942 for 60,000 French francs; a Chagall, 'old possession of my sister, who was a pupil of her'(?); a Dix from Berlin in 1934; and a Nolde, 'gift of the artist to me'.

Here's a link to the list of works returned to Gurlitt in 1950 (also published in The New York Times here).

Lootedart.com notes that 'on the list is the MaxBeckmann 'Lion Tamer' sold by Cornelius Gurlitt at Lempertz Cologne in 2011 (previously owned by Alfred Flechtheim with claims settled prior to the auction house sale). Patricia Cohen writes about this in The New York Times' "Documents Reveal How Looted Nazi Art Was Restored to Dealer".

On another note, Mail Online ran the story "Can the weirdo who hid £1bn of Nazi art solve the mystery of the Tsar's lost treasure trove" which includes statements from Cornelius Gurlitt's estranged cousin.

Thursday, November 07, 2013 - , No comments

Gurlitt Art Collection: Petition on Change.org to urge Germany to publish list of artworks associated with the Hildebrand Gurlitt-Cornelius Gurlitt investigation

Lynda Albertson initiated a petition on Change.org: "Germany: Immediately publish the list of art works associated with the Hildebrand Gurlitt-Cornelius Gurlitt investigation":
This case poses a legal and moral minefield for authorities. The Nazi regime systematically plundered thousands of art works from museums and individuals across Europe. An unknown number of those works are still missing.  We need to instill a culture of transparency, not just with museum and private collections worldwide but also in ongoing investigations where artworks have been recovered or seized.
Here's art critic Christopher Knight asking in The Los Angeles Times to "Lift the veil from the Nazi art cache".

November 6, 2013

Gurlitt Art Collection Discovery: Augsburg Press Conference on November 5 reacts to Focus exclusive


by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

Yesterday's Augsburg press conference followed publication Sunday by the German magazine Focus of the discovery of an art collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a German art dealer of modern art active during the Nazi era.

Here's a video posted by the British newspaper, the Guardian, on November 5, 2013:
A press conference in Augsburg shows some of the 1,406 unknown works of art found in a Munich apartment in 2012. They include works by Matisse, Marc Chagall, and Otto Dix. Reinhard Nemetz, Augsburg state prosecutor, said (translated from German to English with subtitles provided by The Guardian): A total of 121 framed and 1,285 non-framed works, among them from famous artists, were seized. There were oil paintings, others in Indian ink, pencil, water colours, colour prints, other prints from artists like Max Liebermann and others. Dr. Meike Hoffmann, Berlin’s Free University, said (in English): “Of course, it was very emotional for me to see the works of art and to recognize that they exist but not comment to the value of the collection.
In an accompanying article ("Picasso, Matisse, and Dix among works found in Munich's Nazi art stash") written by Philip Oltermann in Berlin, the art works were described:
Treasures discovered during a raid on Cornelius Gurlitt's flat in Schwabing include a total of 1,406 works – 121 of them framed – by Franz Marc; Oskar Kokoschka; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Max Liebermann; Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; Max Beckmann; Albrecht Dürer; a Canaletto sketch of Padua; a Carl Spitzweg etching of a couple playing music; a Gustave Courbet painting of a girl with a goat; and drawings and prints by Pablo Picasso.
Art historian Meike Hoffmann, of the Free University of Berlin, said the art world would be particularly excited about the discovery of a valuable Matisse painting from around 1920 and works that were previously unknown or unseen: an Otto Dix self-portrait dated around 1919, and a Chagall gouache painting of an "allegorical scene" with a man kissing a woman wearing a sheep's head.
Other information reported by the Guardian from the conference: 'most of the pictures had been stored professionally and were in good condition; only a couple of paintings had been slightly dirty'; the flat had been raided on 28 February 2012, not in early 2011 as Focus magazine had reported on Sunday; Gurlitt, an Austrian national owns another property in Salzburg, but a Munich customs official 'said the existence of more hidden artworks was "not likely"'; and the whereabouts of the 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt are unknown.
The emergence of old masters such as Dürer and Canaletto among the modernists further complicates the picture of the extraordinary art collection. Initial speculation had been that most of the pictures were "degenerate art" looted or confiscated by the Nazis. Now it looks likely that at least some were purchased by Cornelius Gurlitt's father, thus making him the rightful owner. One painting, by Gustave Courbet, was auctioned off -- presumably to Gurlitt senior -- as late as 1949. Hoffmann said that determining which of the works have to be returned to the descendants of their rightful owners could take a long time.
As for the authenticity of the art, the Guardian reported:
Hoffmann said she had only properly examined 500 works and could therefore not comment on the entire collection. "With the works I have done research on, I am assuming that they are authentic works. But that's just my personal assessment."
Melissa Eddy for The New York Times reported from Augsburg in "German Official Provide Details on Looted Art Trove" (November 5) identified Siegfried Klöble, the head of the Munich customs office, as the one who oversaw the operation to recover the art and Reinhard Nemetz as the chief of the state prosecutor's office.

Louise Barnett in Berlin reporting for Britain's Telegraph in "Lost Nazi art: Unknown Chagall among paintings in Berlin flat" focused on the emergence of an 'untitled allegorical scene by Marc Chagall' identified by Dr. Hoffmann as 'dating back to the mid-1920s and "was of especially high art history value"'.  Here's a link to images credited to AFP/Getty images as posted by the Telegraph.

After the press conference, Catherine Hickley for Bloomberg reported in "U.S. List Helps Heirs Track Nazi-Loot Art in Munich Cache":
A list of art compiled by U.S. troops in 1950 may help Jewish heirs identify works looted by the Nazis that wound up in a squalid Munich apartment, researchers from the Holocaust Art Restitution Project said. U.S. troops vetted Heldebrand Gurlitt's collection -- including works by Max Beckmann and Edgar Degas -- and handed it back to him 63 years ago, according to a custody receipt that Marc Masurovsky and Willi Korte, researchers at HARP, found yesterday in the National Archive in Washington.
Masurovsky told Hickley that Gurlitt 'regularly acquired works at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, where the Nazis assembled art looted from French Jewish families during the Nazi occupation. Masurovsky is the director of the Cultural Plunder Database of the objects taken from the Jeu de Paume.

Here's links to two article published prior to the conference:


And here's links to articles reacting to the news:

Gurlitt Art Collection: BBC Newshour Interviews Marc Masurovsky of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and Clarence Epstein of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project

Marc Masurovsky of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) and Clarence Epstein of the Max Stern Art Restitution Project were interviewed http://soundcloud.com/dina-newman/looted yesterday by BBC Newshour as to his reaction to the headlines out of Germany about the exclusive released by Focus magazine that Bavarian customs officials had discovered a hoard of suspected Nazi-era looted art belonging to Cornelius Gurlitt. Here's an excerpt:
Interviewer: How significant do you think it is? 
Marc Masurovsky: Well, it's always significant in terms of the numbers, but it's also one of those I told you so moments where everybody loves to believe that everything was destroyed so that we don't have to deal with it, but unfortunately there were enough dealers and collectors who profited from the Holocaust and Nazi plunder that they basically stashed the works away. What I'm curious about is how many did Mr. Cornelius Gurlitt sell before he was nabbed? So that's another question that doesn't seem to get asked.
Here's a link to "Plundered Cultures, Stolen Heritagethe conference at Concordia University in Montreal opening tomorrow that will gather "leading experts on the experiences of cultural destruction and mass atrocities suffered by the First Nations, Armenian and Jewish peoples are assembling to discuss the motives of the perpetrators of these assaults, their impact, and the significance these attacks pose for restitution and reconciliation today." Mr. Masurovsky will be one of the speakers.