From New Zealand Herald.com: High life ends for couple who conned art world
They look more like old hippies than the couple who conned the art world out of an estimated €30 million ($52.4 million). He sports worn jeans, a greying blond mane of shoulder-length hair, a moustache and a beard. Under the unforgiving neon lights of the Cologne courtroom, 60-year-old Wolfgang Beltracchi looks like a bizarre cross between Frank Zappa and King Charles the First.
Helene Beltracchi, his 53-year-old wife and accomplice, dresses in long flowing robes and her hair cascades to her waist in thick tresses. Before each court session, the two embrace passionately in front of the public and press.
Several German newspapers have described the couple as "highly sympathetic" despite the enormity of their crimes: Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi have admitted to masterminding the biggest art forgery scandal in German - if not global - history. With Helene Beltracchi's sister, Jeanette Spurzem, and logistical expert Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus, they face charges of systematically duping the art world over 14 years.
The four are expected to be sentenced for their crimes today. They have confessed to supplying top auction houses, including Sotheby's and Christie's, with scores of forged paintings.
They claimed they were undiscovered works by famous early 20th century artists such as the German Expressionists Max Ernst, Max Pechstein and Heinrich Campendonk. Their victims included the American comedian Steve Martin, who was duped into paying about US$800,000 ($1 million) for a supposed Campendonk painting called Landscape with Horses.
Wolfgang Beltracchi, the promising art student from the north-western provincial town of Geilenkirchen, was the master forger.
Many of the 53 works the Beltracchis sold to art houses fetched over €500,000 apiece. The Beltracchis are believed to have enriched themselves to the tune of €16 million.
They spent their fortune on building an opulent villa in the southern German town of Freiburg and on lavishly restoring the country estate they acquired in southwest France. Neighbours said they were shocked by the couple's obsession with their wealth. The Beltracchis spent up to €17,000 a month on shopping, hotels and travel alone.
But, these days, Wolfgang Beltracchi sucks sweets in the Cologne court where the four have been on trial since the beginning of September. He even shares the occasional joke with the presiding judge.
The couple and their accomplices have cut a deal with Germany's justice authorities.
They have confessed to everything. In return they have been promised jail terms likely to amount to six years for Wolfgang Beltracchi and four for Helene. The others will probably get away with suspended jail terms. If the Beltracchis are lucky they will be allowed to work outside prison by day and spend only nights in a cell.
At their trial, the Beltracchis have even accused the world's art houses of themselves being consumed by "greed and depravity" in their relentless pursuit of sensational works capable of fetching sensational prices.
Yet their 14 years of meticulously planned deception are certain to go down as one of the biggest and most elaborate art frauds ever recorded. The Beltracchis started putting their expert forgeries on the market in 1995.
Helene Beltracchi managed to hoodwink the art world into believing she had been left the works by her grandfather Werner Jagers. She claimed he had bought them at the beginning of the Nazi era from the renowned Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim.
The couple went to extraordinary lengths to make their bogus claims appear convincing. Helene Beltracchi had herself photographed by her husband with her hair up, clad in a sombre black dress and pearls in front of several of the Jagers Collection paintings.
The black-and-white photograph was slightly out of focus and printed on pre-war developing paper.
Helene Beltracchi's impersonation of her grandmother, Josefine Jagers, took in all the art dealers and served as indisputable proof of the authenticity of the collection. "It was great fun," Wolfgang Beltracchi told judges.
To dupe prospective buyers, the Beltracchis bought up pre-war canvases which were then carefully sanded down and made ready for forgeries expertly applied, often with the help of a slide projector. The trick was made easier thanks to experts like Werner Spies, a celebrated Max Ernst authority and former director of the Pompidou arts centre in Paris.
Spies, who admits to having been wholly gullible, appears to have been completely taken in by the paintings and even vouched for their authenticity. In fact, the Jagers Collection never existed. Werner Jagers was a member of the Nazi party who had no interest in art. He made his money in the construction industry and died in 1992. Helene Beltracchi is the daughter of a lorry driver.
Wolfgang Beltracchi grew up as Wolfgang Fischer, later adopting his wife's surname. His father made a living out of restoring church paintings. He was a gifted art student but never completed his studies. His attempts to become an art dealer were also a failure.
"For years I lived on sex, drugs and rock'n'roll," he claimed at his trial. But his life changed dramatically when he met Helene Beltracchi.
Her background was working class. Her mother gave her money to buy books and told her that she would "make it" even without a proper education. Both appear to have had high aspirations which were frustrated.
The Beltracchis' elaborate con trick began to unravel in 2006 after the Lempertz auction house in Cologne was offered a painting by Helene Beltracchi's sister which was conclusively proven to be a forgery. The work, named Red Picture with Horses, was supposed to have been painted by Heinrich Campendonk.
The painting was sold to the Maltese company Trasteco at auction for €2.9 million. But Trasteco became suspicious and commissioned two art historians to investigate. Their findings led to scientific analysis of the paint. It found that the painting contained a colour which did not exist in 1914 when the work was said to have been completed.
Police arrested the Beltracchis in August last year as they were leaving their luxury villa to go out to dinner. Their two homes are now being sold and Wolfgang Beltracchi claims the €1 million remaining in his Swiss bank account has since been handed to the court authorities. But Wolfgang Beltracchi now apparently hopes the publicity from his trial may help him to further his own future career as an artist after jail.
As the presiding judge in Cologne revealed last week: "To clear up any confusion, Mr Beltracchi has agreed to take back all his forgeries and return them to their owners signed - this time - with his own name."
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Painting stolen by Nazis returned to Montrealer’s estate
From The Globe and Mail: Painting stolen by Nazis returned to Montrealer’s estate
An 18th-century Dutch painting that once belonged to the prominent German-Canadian art dealer Max Stern has been returned to the dealer’s estate after being in the possession of a casino in southern Germany for many decades.
The Masters of the Goldsmith Guild in Amsterdam in 1701 by portrait painter Juriaen Pool II (1664-1750) is one of an estimated 400 art works Stern was forced to de-accession from his collection by the Nazis before the Second World War.
Stern, who died in 1987, eventually settled in Montreal in 1941; in 1947 he became the owner of the prestigious Dominion Gallery. His estate and its three university beneficiaries (Montreal’s Concordia and McGill Universities and Jerusalem’s Hebrew University) have been working to recover Nazi-looted work for the estate since 2004.
A restitution ceremony for the Pool – a large oil of some of Amsterdam’s most prominent citizens – was held Tuesday at the Amsterdam Museum.
It’s the ninth Nazi-plundered art work to be recovered on behalf of the estate.
Samuel Beckett's Letters Reveal Roots of Resistance
From The Jewish Daily: Samuel Beckett's Letters Reveal Roots of Resistance
Although Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett is known for his tragicomically inert characters, he himself was an anti-Nazi activist during World War II. Unlike the ever-absent Godot, the bedridden vagrant protagonist of his novel “Molloy” or the despairing characters in his play “Endgame” who lack legs and the ability to stand, Beckett — though painfully shy and prone to melancholy — was a dynamic member of the French Résistance. His surprising wartime actions are detailed, if not fully explained, in the 2004 biography from Grove Press, “Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett” by James Knowlson.
Virtuous Man: A new book of letters sheds light on Samuel Beckett’s bravery in the face of Nazism.
John Haynes
Virtuous Man: A new book of letters sheds light on Samuel Beckett’s bravery in the face of Nazism.
Like his mentor, James Joyce, Beckett was unusually philo-Semitic among European modernist writers, and he joined the Résistance, Knowlson notes, soon after Joyce’s Jewish friend and amanuensis, Paul Léon, was arrested in Paris (Léon would later be murdered in Auschwitz). A fuller understanding of Beckett’s motivation for his pro-Jewish and anti-Nazi activism had to wait until two new books appeared.
Taking us from wartime to the early part of the author’s great achievements, Cambridge University Press has just published “The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941–1956” following the first volume in 2009. This adds to insight gleaned from “Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937,” released in June by Continuum. Author Mark Nixon, analyzing still-unpublished journals by Beckett, describes the latter’s reactions to a sojourn in Germany intended to improve his grasp of the language and knowledge of the visual arts.
Together, these books underline how profound Beckett’s ties were with the Jewish people. Some literary studies have suggested how, as Irish writers in self-imposed exile, Beckett and Joyce identified intellectually with Jews as people of the Diaspora. Moreover, “otherness,” a sense of apartness and singularity, was a motivating force in both writers’ work, as explored in such studies as Marilyn Reizbaum’s “James Joyce’s Judaic Other” (1999) from Stanford University Press. Yet Beckett’s attraction to Jewishness was more than just metaphoric otherness — it was inspired by family unity.
Beckett’s beloved Aunt Cissie married a Jewish art dealer, William Abraham Sinclair, known as “Boss.” Following Boss’s death, in 1937, his brother Harry Sinclair sued a Dublin writer, Oliver St. John Gogarty, for libel after passages in a book referred to him and Boss as “Two Jews in Sackville Street” and to their grandfather as an “old usurer.” Beckett, quiet and retiring by nature, made a special trip to Dublin from Paris, where he was by then based, to testify on behalf of the plaintiffs. Beckett was fond of Sinclair, and writes to a friend about Boss, “His last words to me were an apology for his poor company.” Beckett added in a letter to a friend, condemning St. John Gogarty and idle bystanders alike, “There are limits to scurrility, & to cynical laissez-faire.”
This moral statement marks an emotional turning point in Beckett’s life. He took a strong public stance, contrary to his own withdrawn and diffident nature, soon after his first exposure, in 1936, to Nazi Germany. Writing from Hamburg to a friend, he noted: “All the lavatory men say ‘Heil Hitler.’” The diaries that Beckett kept during this tour contain “numerous references to people being ‘appallingly Nazi,’” according to Nixon, who quotes Beckett on Third Reich ideology: “The expressions ‘historical necessity’ & ‘Germanic destiny’ start the vomit moving upwards.”
On the contrary, Beckett was drawn to Germany’s Jews, such as the eminent Polish-born art historian Rosa Schapire, who would escape to England in 1939. With typical prescience, Beckett wrote to Irish poet Thomas McGreevy in 1937 that the Nazi “campaign against ‘Art-Bolschevism’ is only just beginning.” To see the paintings of the once acclaimed German-Jewish modernist painter Max Liebermann, Beckett had to obtain permission to visit the Museum of Hamburg basement where they were then hidden from view. As the author of a 1930 book on Marcel Proust, Beckett was surprised to meet a German doctoral candidate who, despite the political situation, was carrying on with a thesis about Proust: “There is something magnificent in doing a doctorate in 1936 with a work on not merely an ‘exquisite,’ but a non-Aryan.”
With a firm understanding of his own historical moment, and a reinforced sense of intellectual courage, Beckett was already prepared for the call to join the Résistance when it came a scant few years later. Back in France after his German experiences, Beckett frequented such friends as the Irish-Jewish critic and scholar Abraham Jacob Leventhal, known as “Con,” and the English poet Lazarus Aaronson.
In 1938 he wrote to a friend and fellow philo-Semite, Arland Ussher, author of “The Magic People: an Irishman Appraises the Jews” (1951). The book likens Ireland to Israel for having a “sense of some special destiny, which enables her to bear her discomfitures with fatalism and secret pride” and praises Jews for holding firm to the belief that “tachlis (purpose) and not tragedy… is the meaning of life.” Beckett informed Ussher of a lunch in a London restaurant with a group that included the “green-foaming” Irish doctor, Edward Morrison, whose “rather anti-Semitic” comments made Beckett flee.
In 1938, although living in penury, Beckett purchased a canvas by Polish-Jewish artist Jankel Adler, whose work he praised for its “beginnings of a delectatio morosa” (morose delight, high praise in Beckettian terms). After the Nazi invasion of France, Beckett would risk his life by translating into English information obtained by Résistance spies so that it could be microfilmed and smuggled into England. In 1942, after members of his Résistance group were arrested — some would be murdered — Beckett and his wife, Suzanne, fled to the Vaucluse department in southeast France, ostensibly a free zone. Yet once there, as he wrote to a member of the Irish Legation in Vichy, local officials couldn’t “believe that I can be called Samuel and am not a Jew.”
After the war, it was only natural that Beckett’s longtime publishers, Jérôme Lindon of Les Editions de Minuit in Paris and Barney Rosset of Grove Press, in New York, would be of Jewish origin. One of Beckett’s most congenial relationships with a director of his plays was with the American Alan Schneider, born Abram Leopoldovich Schneider to a Russian Jewish family in Kharkov. Among Beckett’s most inspiring postwar friendships was the one with Israeli artist Avigdor Arikha, of Romanian Jewish origin whom he met in 1956.These Jewish literary and artistic personalities helped enable Beckett’s creative vision to be realized.
Modern Jewish creativity also intrigued Beckett, as in 1949, when he reported to McGreevy that he had just heard a Paris performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Quintet for Intestines, presented by the indefatigable dodecaphonist [René] Leibowitz. Suzanne loathed it. I was very interested.” The entangled melodic lines as conducted by the modernist 12-tone composer Leibowitz intrigued the gut-obsessed Beckett.
Overall, these “Letters,” more than just presenting a masterful French writer — the original language of many of these missives — give the impression of Beckett’s inherent virtue, as Lindon wrote in a 1967 tribute, his “nobility and modesty, lucidity and goodness… so real, so truly great, and so good.”
Although Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett is known for his tragicomically inert characters, he himself was an anti-Nazi activist during World War II. Unlike the ever-absent Godot, the bedridden vagrant protagonist of his novel “Molloy” or the despairing characters in his play “Endgame” who lack legs and the ability to stand, Beckett — though painfully shy and prone to melancholy — was a dynamic member of the French Résistance. His surprising wartime actions are detailed, if not fully explained, in the 2004 biography from Grove Press, “Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett” by James Knowlson.
Virtuous Man: A new book of letters sheds light on Samuel Beckett’s bravery in the face of Nazism.
John Haynes
Virtuous Man: A new book of letters sheds light on Samuel Beckett’s bravery in the face of Nazism.
Like his mentor, James Joyce, Beckett was unusually philo-Semitic among European modernist writers, and he joined the Résistance, Knowlson notes, soon after Joyce’s Jewish friend and amanuensis, Paul Léon, was arrested in Paris (Léon would later be murdered in Auschwitz). A fuller understanding of Beckett’s motivation for his pro-Jewish and anti-Nazi activism had to wait until two new books appeared.
Taking us from wartime to the early part of the author’s great achievements, Cambridge University Press has just published “The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941–1956” following the first volume in 2009. This adds to insight gleaned from “Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937,” released in June by Continuum. Author Mark Nixon, analyzing still-unpublished journals by Beckett, describes the latter’s reactions to a sojourn in Germany intended to improve his grasp of the language and knowledge of the visual arts.
Together, these books underline how profound Beckett’s ties were with the Jewish people. Some literary studies have suggested how, as Irish writers in self-imposed exile, Beckett and Joyce identified intellectually with Jews as people of the Diaspora. Moreover, “otherness,” a sense of apartness and singularity, was a motivating force in both writers’ work, as explored in such studies as Marilyn Reizbaum’s “James Joyce’s Judaic Other” (1999) from Stanford University Press. Yet Beckett’s attraction to Jewishness was more than just metaphoric otherness — it was inspired by family unity.
Beckett’s beloved Aunt Cissie married a Jewish art dealer, William Abraham Sinclair, known as “Boss.” Following Boss’s death, in 1937, his brother Harry Sinclair sued a Dublin writer, Oliver St. John Gogarty, for libel after passages in a book referred to him and Boss as “Two Jews in Sackville Street” and to their grandfather as an “old usurer.” Beckett, quiet and retiring by nature, made a special trip to Dublin from Paris, where he was by then based, to testify on behalf of the plaintiffs. Beckett was fond of Sinclair, and writes to a friend about Boss, “His last words to me were an apology for his poor company.” Beckett added in a letter to a friend, condemning St. John Gogarty and idle bystanders alike, “There are limits to scurrility, & to cynical laissez-faire.”
This moral statement marks an emotional turning point in Beckett’s life. He took a strong public stance, contrary to his own withdrawn and diffident nature, soon after his first exposure, in 1936, to Nazi Germany. Writing from Hamburg to a friend, he noted: “All the lavatory men say ‘Heil Hitler.’” The diaries that Beckett kept during this tour contain “numerous references to people being ‘appallingly Nazi,’” according to Nixon, who quotes Beckett on Third Reich ideology: “The expressions ‘historical necessity’ & ‘Germanic destiny’ start the vomit moving upwards.”
On the contrary, Beckett was drawn to Germany’s Jews, such as the eminent Polish-born art historian Rosa Schapire, who would escape to England in 1939. With typical prescience, Beckett wrote to Irish poet Thomas McGreevy in 1937 that the Nazi “campaign against ‘Art-Bolschevism’ is only just beginning.” To see the paintings of the once acclaimed German-Jewish modernist painter Max Liebermann, Beckett had to obtain permission to visit the Museum of Hamburg basement where they were then hidden from view. As the author of a 1930 book on Marcel Proust, Beckett was surprised to meet a German doctoral candidate who, despite the political situation, was carrying on with a thesis about Proust: “There is something magnificent in doing a doctorate in 1936 with a work on not merely an ‘exquisite,’ but a non-Aryan.”
With a firm understanding of his own historical moment, and a reinforced sense of intellectual courage, Beckett was already prepared for the call to join the Résistance when it came a scant few years later. Back in France after his German experiences, Beckett frequented such friends as the Irish-Jewish critic and scholar Abraham Jacob Leventhal, known as “Con,” and the English poet Lazarus Aaronson.
In 1938 he wrote to a friend and fellow philo-Semite, Arland Ussher, author of “The Magic People: an Irishman Appraises the Jews” (1951). The book likens Ireland to Israel for having a “sense of some special destiny, which enables her to bear her discomfitures with fatalism and secret pride” and praises Jews for holding firm to the belief that “tachlis (purpose) and not tragedy… is the meaning of life.” Beckett informed Ussher of a lunch in a London restaurant with a group that included the “green-foaming” Irish doctor, Edward Morrison, whose “rather anti-Semitic” comments made Beckett flee.
In 1938, although living in penury, Beckett purchased a canvas by Polish-Jewish artist Jankel Adler, whose work he praised for its “beginnings of a delectatio morosa” (morose delight, high praise in Beckettian terms). After the Nazi invasion of France, Beckett would risk his life by translating into English information obtained by Résistance spies so that it could be microfilmed and smuggled into England. In 1942, after members of his Résistance group were arrested — some would be murdered — Beckett and his wife, Suzanne, fled to the Vaucluse department in southeast France, ostensibly a free zone. Yet once there, as he wrote to a member of the Irish Legation in Vichy, local officials couldn’t “believe that I can be called Samuel and am not a Jew.”
After the war, it was only natural that Beckett’s longtime publishers, Jérôme Lindon of Les Editions de Minuit in Paris and Barney Rosset of Grove Press, in New York, would be of Jewish origin. One of Beckett’s most congenial relationships with a director of his plays was with the American Alan Schneider, born Abram Leopoldovich Schneider to a Russian Jewish family in Kharkov. Among Beckett’s most inspiring postwar friendships was the one with Israeli artist Avigdor Arikha, of Romanian Jewish origin whom he met in 1956.These Jewish literary and artistic personalities helped enable Beckett’s creative vision to be realized.
Modern Jewish creativity also intrigued Beckett, as in 1949, when he reported to McGreevy that he had just heard a Paris performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Quintet for Intestines, presented by the indefatigable dodecaphonist [René] Leibowitz. Suzanne loathed it. I was very interested.” The entangled melodic lines as conducted by the modernist 12-tone composer Leibowitz intrigued the gut-obsessed Beckett.
Overall, these “Letters,” more than just presenting a masterful French writer — the original language of many of these missives — give the impression of Beckett’s inherent virtue, as Lindon wrote in a 1967 tribute, his “nobility and modesty, lucidity and goodness… so real, so truly great, and so good.”
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
German project returns to Jews books stolen by Nazis
From Monsters and Critics: German project returns to Jews books stolen by Nazis
Leipzig, Germany - A team in the German city of Leipzig has scoured the local university library, going through endless obscure records to return books stolen by the Nazis to their rightful heirs.
Germany's 1933-45 Nazi regime not only plundered art and other valuables from Jews, but also books.
Searching for books seized by the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) proved hard work, explains librarian Cordula Reuss, who heads the project in Leipzig.
For more than two years, the librarian deciphered faded handwritten lists, went through boxes of indexes and examined thousands of books dating back to the pre-1945 period.
Reuss knows her way around the winding corridors of the Biblioteca Albertina, as Leipzig University library is called.
She stops at one of the many archives, yanks the handle of the sliding shelves, and takes out a book.
The first page bears a stamp reading 'Institutum Judaicum Leipzig.' This volume was confiscated by the Gestapo during Adolf Hitler's rule and ended up here shortly after World War II.
'We found in our archives a total of 3,409 books that had been seized illegally from institutions or private libraries run by Jews or resistance fighters during the Nazi era,' Reuss says.
The Nazi-Looted Assets Project aims to return the largest possible number of the works to heirs or their legal successors.
Reuss and her team of two had to do true detective work at first, as the Gestapo book records were often obscure.
'Frequently, the title of the book had not been entered, but they had written things like, 'A bundle of 172 Marxist brochures',' Reuss explains.
The researchers were luckier with books classified as 'banned and damaging literature,' which had been documented more thoroughly on extra lists by police.
A total of 81 different institutions or persons have now been identified as the legal owners of some of the books in the library.
Research into the origins of property stolen from Jews has been carried out more intensively since the 1998 Washington Declaration. In that document, Germany and 43 other nations agreed to identify in their collections art works and other assets confiscated by the Nazis and to restitute them to their rightful owners.
The former West Germany 'felt that individual restitutions and compensations had been sorted out in the post-war era,' says Uwe Hartmann, head of the Bureau for Provenance Investigation, which was established in Berlin three years ago.
'But lots of looted items have still been found in the archives of some institutions,' he adds. As the former East Germany had blocked all demands by war victims for restitution, that part of the reunited Germany - where Leipzig is located - is now proving a treasure trove for property stolen by the Nazis.
The Berlin bureau helped to fund the two-year project in Leipzig, the results of which will be presented in an exhibition in November.
The owners of the stolen books included Victor Armhaus, a Jewish interpreter from Leipzig who died in the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp in 1942. Two nieces of his in Israel have made contact.
'It is very moving when there is an heir who remembers a person,' Reuss says. Some of the 59 volumes in Armhaus' private collection will now be sent to his nieces.
Leipzig, Germany - A team in the German city of Leipzig has scoured the local university library, going through endless obscure records to return books stolen by the Nazis to their rightful heirs.
Germany's 1933-45 Nazi regime not only plundered art and other valuables from Jews, but also books.
Searching for books seized by the Gestapo (Nazi secret police) proved hard work, explains librarian Cordula Reuss, who heads the project in Leipzig.
For more than two years, the librarian deciphered faded handwritten lists, went through boxes of indexes and examined thousands of books dating back to the pre-1945 period.
Reuss knows her way around the winding corridors of the Biblioteca Albertina, as Leipzig University library is called.
She stops at one of the many archives, yanks the handle of the sliding shelves, and takes out a book.
The first page bears a stamp reading 'Institutum Judaicum Leipzig.' This volume was confiscated by the Gestapo during Adolf Hitler's rule and ended up here shortly after World War II.
'We found in our archives a total of 3,409 books that had been seized illegally from institutions or private libraries run by Jews or resistance fighters during the Nazi era,' Reuss says.
The Nazi-Looted Assets Project aims to return the largest possible number of the works to heirs or their legal successors.
Reuss and her team of two had to do true detective work at first, as the Gestapo book records were often obscure.
'Frequently, the title of the book had not been entered, but they had written things like, 'A bundle of 172 Marxist brochures',' Reuss explains.
The researchers were luckier with books classified as 'banned and damaging literature,' which had been documented more thoroughly on extra lists by police.
A total of 81 different institutions or persons have now been identified as the legal owners of some of the books in the library.
Research into the origins of property stolen from Jews has been carried out more intensively since the 1998 Washington Declaration. In that document, Germany and 43 other nations agreed to identify in their collections art works and other assets confiscated by the Nazis and to restitute them to their rightful owners.
The former West Germany 'felt that individual restitutions and compensations had been sorted out in the post-war era,' says Uwe Hartmann, head of the Bureau for Provenance Investigation, which was established in Berlin three years ago.
'But lots of looted items have still been found in the archives of some institutions,' he adds. As the former East Germany had blocked all demands by war victims for restitution, that part of the reunited Germany - where Leipzig is located - is now proving a treasure trove for property stolen by the Nazis.
The Berlin bureau helped to fund the two-year project in Leipzig, the results of which will be presented in an exhibition in November.
The owners of the stolen books included Victor Armhaus, a Jewish interpreter from Leipzig who died in the Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration camp in 1942. Two nieces of his in Israel have made contact.
'It is very moving when there is an heir who remembers a person,' Reuss says. Some of the 59 volumes in Armhaus' private collection will now be sent to his nieces.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Nazi-looted art found in Swiss museum
From YNetNews.com: Nazi-looted art found in Swiss museum
A painting looted from a Berlin Jewish family by Nazis has been found by US authorities at the Kunsthaus museum in Zurich, museum officials said Tuesday.
Confirming a report by local media, the museum said that the painting was an 1887 portrait called "Madame La Suire" by Swiss painter Albert von Keller, who was popular in Berlin and Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century
The painting was acquired by the Sommerguths, a rich Jewish couple from Berlin who had a substantial collection of 106 paintings, including Renaissance masterpieces as well as works by Camille Pissaro
But after the Nazis came to power in Germany, they were forced to give up the collection, which was sold during an auction in 1939.
Alfred Sommerguth, who acquired his fortune as co-director of the German tobacco manufacturer Loeser & Wolff, managed to flee to Cuba in 1941 at the age of 82, before reaching New York where he died a destitute in 1950.
His wife Gertrude died four years later.
The painting was found by chance, during an exhibition on von Keller organised by the Zurich museum.
"We had received a heritage donation of 350 von Keller paintings from the widow of a rich Zurich collector, on condition that we organise an exhibition of the paintings," said a museum spokesman.
In New York, the authorities charged with finding paintings stolen or confiscated from Holocaust victims noticed the portrait and sought explanations from Zurich.
It turned out that the donation to the museum was made in 2006, after the death of the widow of Oskar Mueller, a von Keller collector.
After the origins of the painting were verified, the Sommerguth heirs decided to leave the painting with the Zurich museum. However, they asked for a sign be put up to indicate its origins and the fact that it was part of Nazi spoils.
According to the museum's spokesman, the painting is worth an estimated 10,000 francs ($10,982) today.
An investigation is ongoing regarding the origins of two other paintings from the Mueller collection, said the spokesman.
It is not the first time that a painting from the Sommerguth collection was found. In 2008, another painting was found on a Sotheby's auction catalogue.
Titled "Scene of a forest with a castle, on the water front," by Karl Blechen, the work was then taken off the sale and returned to the family's heirs.
One Jewish Family's Battle with a Munich Museum
From Spiegel Online: One Jewish Family's Battle with a Munich Museum
Heirs of the Berlin banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy have demanded that a Munich art museum return a Picasso they say was sold during World War II as a result of Nazi persecution. But the museum seems uninterested in pursuing a fair resolution.
When Bernd Neumann, Germany's minister of state for culture, is asked about the Washington Conference Principles, he quickly reverts to the practiced narrative of guilt that German politicians adopt whenever the Holocaust is mentioned.
Germany recognizes its "unreserved moral responsibility for the restitution of looted art," Neumann, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats, says in such situations. The Washington principles, signed by 44 countries in 1998, obligates signatories to find a just and fair solution to disputes resulting from artworks looted by the Nazis during and immediately prior to World War II. Germany, Neumann never tires of insisting, is committed to doing its part.
Yet as soon as German museum directors or their legal counsels are faced with the prospect of implementing the Washington principles, things look quite a bit different. Should expensive paintings by well-known artists be involved, museums in Germany tend to delay their return to the proper owners for as long as possible. They play for time and use every conceivable excuse to dally.
That, at least, has been the experience of Berlin-based historian Julius Schoeps, 69, in his dealings with the Munich's Neue Pinakothek museum. Schoeps, a descendant of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, has joined 29 other heirs of the Berlin banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in requesting the return of the Picasso painting "Madame Soler" from the Bavarian State Painting Collections.
Uncertain Prospects
This is not the first such legal battle the Mendelssohn heirs have engaged in. In 2008, they demanded the return of "Boy Leading a Horse" from the Museum of Modern Art and "Le Moulin de la Galette" from the Guggenheim Museum, both Picassos. Given the uncertain prospects of winning the legal battle in United States courts, they agreed to withdraw their claim in exchange for a $5 million payment.
In a verdict preparatory to the settlement, a judge at the US District Court in New York wrote: "Claimants have adduced competent evidence that Paul never intended to transfer any of his paintings and that he was forced to transfer them only because of threats and economic pressures by the Nazi government."
Even before the Nazis rose to power in Germany in 1933, Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was concerned about what might happen. "The Jews will have problems," he said at the time. During the Nazi Aryanization campaign in 1933, he was ejected from the Central Association of German Banks and Bankers and from the board of the Reich Insurance Office. His assets quickly began to dwindle and, starting in 1934, he began selling pictures from the exquisite collection assembled for him by the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim.
Still, he was able to transport five Picasso paintings to Switzerland where the German-Jewish art trader Justin Thannhauser, based at the time in Basel, undertook the sale of the artwork.
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy died in May 1935. It remains unclear whether Thannhauser ever paid him or his heirs for the five Picassos. It is known, however, that the Bavarian State Painting Collections bought "Madame Soler" from the Thannhauser Gallery in New York in 1964. Today, the painting -- which depicts the wife of a tailor in Barcelona who supported Picasso before he became famous -- is likely worth several million euros.
Burden of Proof
The Mendelssohn-Bartholdy heirs and their Washington-based lawyer argue that Thannhauser was never the legal owner of the paintings. But Andrea Bambi, who researches the provenance of works of art for the Pinakothek in Munich, insists that the sale was legitimate. The art historian also doubts whether Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was faced with serious economic pressure that might have led him to sell the paintings. The banker's fortune, she says, was immense according to his testament, which was opened after his death.
"It is obscene," says Julius Schoeps, "that we descendents of Nazi victims now must prove that our predecessors were really persecuted as Jews."
Schoeps can at least refer to Bernd Neumann, who said: "Doubt must be resolved in favor of the persecuted." And it is just, Neumann said, "that the burden of proof lies with public facilities."
There is a possible way out of the current confrontation. The German government has established a commission to look into contested cases like that of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy paintings. The commission, led by a former president of the German Constitutional Court, makes recommendations as to what "fair resolutions" might look like.
The lawyer for the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy heirs recommended that the commission be contacted in the case. But the Munich museum has refused. The reason must sound deeply cynical to the ears of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy descendents. "The commission," said the Pinakothek legal council Robert Kirchmaier, "was founded for ambiguous cases. Not for clear-cut ones such as this."
Monday, October 24, 2011
Online project to shine light on Nazi art
From Monsters and Critics: Online project to shine light on Nazi art
Munich - The shadow the Nazis cast over German art was particularly visible in Munich, where an online project now intends to demystify the huge art exhibitions staged by Adolf Hitler's regime.
Hitler named the Bavarian capital 'the capital of the movement,' as it is here that Nazism started off.
On July 18, 1937, the Fuehrer opened the Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art), a key architectural and artistic project of the Nazi era, where an annual showcase of German art was held.
The building in Munich was 'the temple of Nazi art,' according to Okwui Enwezor, the Nigerian-born head of what is now called simply the Haus der Kunst (House of Art). It soon came to represent the suppression of free art.
There has been extensive research into - and even more has been written about - the building.
Yet what was actually shown behind these massive walls, at events called the Great German Art Exhibitions (GDK), is little known.
A research project involving the Haus and other German institutes now intends to shed light on Nazi art.
The project called GDK Research, which will be launched online on Thursday, deals with the exhibitions staged in the Haus from 1937 to 1944. The one planned for 1945 never took place, because the Nazis were defeated in World War II.
'For the first time, we will be able to see what these works actually looked like,' project spokesman Christian Fuhrmeister says.
So far, research into the Munich art which the Nazis held up as 'pure' has only focused on particular themes, such as the Nazi image of women, or has applied ideological analysis rather than neutral scholarship to the topic.
'The National Socialist period was not talked about. It was a taboo subject and was long suppressed in this as in other areas,' Fuhrmeister explains. 'The GDK seemed to be precisely the kind of thing that people did not want to be reminded of.'
Fuhrmeister believes the exhibition will demystify Nazi art, much of which was in fact not overbearing, nor overtly propagandistic.
Idealism and escapism were central to many of these works, particularly during the war years, art historian Iris Lauterbach says.
'Female nudes, more nudes and occasionally a dead soldier,' she summarizes.
Nazi art was 'at times totally banal,' Enwezor says.
Art historians participating in the project worked for two years to document the 12,550 exhibits, only 10 per cent of which were known through reproductions.
The online platform allows researchers and others to get an impression of the exhibitions that drew up to 600,000 visitors annually.
All the works, artists and sometimes the buyers are documented, along with the price paid. Around half of the exhibits were sold.
The whereabouts of only about 10 per cent of the works are currently known, according to art historian Ralf Peters. Some works turn up at art auctions from time to time. The research has been largely based on 2,500 photographs taken of the exhibition rooms.
Some of the buyers remain anonymous in the database for fear that someone may sue under privacy laws, but prominent buyers are named.
Nazi leaders spent vast sums of money on art, the project shows.
Over the eight years that exhibitions were held, Hitler's propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels bought 1.2-million-reichsmarks worth of art there, while Hitler's architect Albert Speer spent 900,000 reichsmarks.
Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and Hitler's chosen successor until he fell from grace in the middle of the war, appeared less interested. He only spent 250,000 reichsmarks, despite being an avid art collector.
The uncontested top buyer was Hitler himself, who spent a total of 7 million reichsmarks, including 15,000 for a picture showing a squirrel and a unicorn.
Print Adres email znajomego Komentarz Podpis Poleć ShareThis'Degenerate art' exhibition opens in Krakow
From Polskie Radio: 'Degenerate art' exhibition opens in Krakow
On 19 July 1937, Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, Germany's Reich Minister of Propaganda, launched an exhibition at Munich's Haus der Kunst, devoted to “degenerate art.”
The show, which would travel throughout Germany and Austria over the next three years, ultimately drew in over 3 million visitors.
Yet although the works on show may have titillated viewers, the pictures were not chosen for their propensity to charm. Rather, they were held up as a showcase of all that was most despicable in the eyes of the regime. According to the 1937 exhibition catalogue, the art revealed “the morbid excesses of insane and depraved people,” who were “advancing the subversion of form and colour.”
In their “deliberate contempt for technical principles,” these artists represented “cultural ruin” and “cultural Bolshevism.”
In 1937 alone, Goebbels confiscated some 16,000 works of art from German museums. A large portion was sold off abroad, making a considerable profit for the Reich.
“Many of the artists committed suicide, as they could not find a way to live under the Nazis and felt that the only option was to kill themselves,” says Judith Schonwiesner, German co-curator of the Krakow show, in an interview with Polish Radio.
Scores of artists emigrated from the Reich, although often this was not enough to sooth their suffering.
“Ernst Toller [a left-wing playwright] went to New York, but he had no chance,” says Schonwiesner.
“He was frustrated. He was not able to speak the language, he had lost his family, he had no money. He didn't have anything.
“He was a destroyed person, and he felt that the only solution was to kill himself.”
The same fate befell Florenz Robat Schabbon.
“He was a very, very young artist,” Schonwiesner reflects.
Following persecution by the Nazis, he committed suicide in 1933.
“His family was so afraid that someone would find his paintings that they burnt most of them. These are just two people from so many. It's unbelievable what happened.”
Cracovian art historian Monika Rydiger, who curated the Polish section of the show, described how when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, artists faced persecution on many levels.
“The main objective for those hunting down artists was to trample on the Polish identity that they represented,” she says. “The next category was Polish Jewish artists, and finally, those that practised avant-garde art.”
All three are represented in the Krakow exibition, the boundaries often blurring between each group.
“Polish artists were often persecuted simply because they were members of the intelligentsia and thus considered a threat to the Nazi authorities," Rydiger continues.
Painter and teacher Jan Rubczak was among a group of artists and their acquaintances arrested en masse at Krakow's Dom Plastykow artists' cafe on 16 April 1942. He was later shot at Auschwitz.
Witold Hulewicz,a former manager of Polish Radio in Wilno (today Vilnius, Lithuania) fell victim in 1941. He was an outstanding translator who specialized in German literature. During the war, he was drawn into underground activity and was executed by the Nazis
“It didn't matter that he was such a fine translator of German literature and that he had tried to support German culture prior to the war,” Rydiger reflects. “That was of no consequence to the Nazis.”
Ironically, many of Poland's avant-garde artists had been influenced by pre-Nazi German trends, a factor that shines through in parts of the exhibition.
“Today we can see that there was a visible influence of German artists on their Polish peers,” Rydiger affirms.
“Many of Poland's artists had studied in German universities and art academies, and we can see how the Poles were deeply rooted in German culture - Expressionism was the most important point of inspiration.”
Judith Schonwiesner feels that the Krakow show represents a “very special cooperation” and hopes that much more work will be done in this field.
“For Poles, it's important to see that Germans too were persecuted by the Nazis, and at the same time, it's important for Germans to see what the Nazis did in Poland – that they didn't just send Jews to concentration camps, they wanted to destroy Poland's entire culture.”
“Hunting down Modernism” runs at the International Cultural Centre, Krakow, until 29 January. It was co-organised by the Rhineland Regional Council and the Kunstmuseum in Muhlheim.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Nazi-Looted Art in a Small Museum
From Cardozo Art Law (posted there on Oct 15, 2011) (I've shared other news on this event, but thought I'd share more: Nazi-Looted Art in a Small Museum
The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida has been feeling the effects of a poor economy like many other arts institutions. As a smaller institution, the Brogan has felt these effects quite strongly. The museum recently came into possession of a Nazi-looted artwork - and it was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
The museum was hosting a 50-piece exhibition of Baroque painting, on loan from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. The exhibit included Girolamo Romano's 1538 painting, "Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue". The Romano may have been stolen from a Jewish family during World War II, and the United States attorney for the Northern District of Florida, Pamela Marsh, has ordered the Brogan to hold onto it until a dispute over its ownership is settled. According to USA Today, the work had once been owned by the Gentili family, and it is believed that the Vichy government seized the work when the family fled during the war. Now, Gentili's grandchildren are taking legal steps to recover the works that were lost during the Nazi-occupation.
The Brogan has meanwhile used this situation as an opportunity to get publicity: "The Brogan Museum at the Center of International Intrigue" The New York Times suggests that hosting nazi-looted art might be a boon to some smaller museums.
The NYT also suggests that the Brogan could apply for a seizure immunity. "The existence of this escape hatch has served to defuse fears among American museum curators that works they have borrowed could be seized, legal experts say." Rick St. Hilaire analyzes the Brogan's chances of obtaining such immunity on his blog.
Barbara Goldstein, president of the Holocaust Education Resource Council, told USA today: "It's a huge issue legally. How does someone trace an artwork like this, and what is its value? This is a great story."
The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida has been feeling the effects of a poor economy like many other arts institutions. As a smaller institution, the Brogan has felt these effects quite strongly. The museum recently came into possession of a Nazi-looted artwork - and it was perhaps a blessing in disguise.
The museum was hosting a 50-piece exhibition of Baroque painting, on loan from the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. The exhibit included Girolamo Romano's 1538 painting, "Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue". The Romano may have been stolen from a Jewish family during World War II, and the United States attorney for the Northern District of Florida, Pamela Marsh, has ordered the Brogan to hold onto it until a dispute over its ownership is settled. According to USA Today, the work had once been owned by the Gentili family, and it is believed that the Vichy government seized the work when the family fled during the war. Now, Gentili's grandchildren are taking legal steps to recover the works that were lost during the Nazi-occupation.
The Brogan has meanwhile used this situation as an opportunity to get publicity: "The Brogan Museum at the Center of International Intrigue" The New York Times suggests that hosting nazi-looted art might be a boon to some smaller museums.
The NYT also suggests that the Brogan could apply for a seizure immunity. "The existence of this escape hatch has served to defuse fears among American museum curators that works they have borrowed could be seized, legal experts say." Rick St. Hilaire analyzes the Brogan's chances of obtaining such immunity on his blog.
Barbara Goldstein, president of the Holocaust Education Resource Council, told USA today: "It's a huge issue legally. How does someone trace an artwork like this, and what is its value? This is a great story."
26-28, 2011: International Conference on Nazi-Looted Art at Lafayette College
From CAA (College Art Association): International Conference on Nazi-Looted Art at Lafayette College
Lafayette College will host a three-day Nazi-looted art conference Oct. 26-28, 2011 exploring the global, historical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding Nazi-looted art during WWII. All events are free and open to the public. Speakers include:
- Marc Masurovsky, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; co-founder, Holocaust Art Restitution Project;
- Victoria Reed, Sadler Curator for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
- Keynote speech, Professor Jonathan Petropoulos, Croul Professor of European History, Claremont McKenna College;
- Lucian Simmons, Worldwide Director of Provenance and Restitution , Sotheby’s;
- Austrian Minister plenipotentiary Dr. Gregor Schusterschitz, Head of the Department for International Law, Austrian Ministry for European Affairs;
- Film; discussion, talk by Nicole Newnham, a producers/directors/writers of The Rape of Europa.
For more info, visit http://www.lafayette.edu; contact Laura McKee, international affairs, mckeel@lafayette.edu ,
Lafayette College will host a three-day Nazi-looted art conference Oct. 26-28, 2011 exploring the global, historical, ethical, and legal issues surrounding Nazi-looted art during WWII. All events are free and open to the public. Speakers include:
- Marc Masurovsky, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; co-founder, Holocaust Art Restitution Project;
- Victoria Reed, Sadler Curator for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston;
- Keynote speech, Professor Jonathan Petropoulos, Croul Professor of European History, Claremont McKenna College;
- Lucian Simmons, Worldwide Director of Provenance and Restitution , Sotheby’s;
- Austrian Minister plenipotentiary Dr. Gregor Schusterschitz, Head of the Department for International Law, Austrian Ministry for European Affairs;
- Film; discussion, talk by Nicole Newnham, a producers/directors/writers of The Rape of Europa.
For more info, visit http://www.lafayette.edu; contact Laura McKee, international affairs, mckeel@lafayette.edu ,
Klimt painting expected to sell for $25 million
From Reuters: Klimt painting expected to sell for $25 million
(Reuters) - A landscape painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt that had been stolen by the Nazis is expected to fetch more than $25 million when it is sold at auction next month, Sotheby's said on Thursday.
"Litzlberg on the Attersee," which was returned to the heirs of its Austrian owner, will be the main attraction at the November 2 sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York.
"Klimt's landscapes are now considered to be one of the great icons of modern art," Simon Shaw, Sotheby's New York head of Impressionist and Modern Art, said in an interview.
"They are one of the most recognizable images and their appeal is truly a global one."
The work gained international attention earlier this year when Austria's Museum der Moderne Salzburg agreed to return the work to George Jorisch, the grandson of its owner. The decision followed a 2002 accord struck with Jewish organizations and the Salzburg city government to return assets stolen by the Nazis.
Jorisch, who now lives in Montreal, is the great-nephew of Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl, who was a great collector of Klimt landscapes. When he died in 1927 the work was inherited by his sister Amalie Redlich, Jorisch's grandmother.
Redlich was deported in 1941 to the Nazi created Lodz ghetto in Poland and never heard from again. Her art collection was seized by the Nazis, sold and ended up in the Austrian museum.
"People love a picture with a story behind it," Shaw said. "It always adds desirability when there is a story behind a painting."
Klimt painted the work in 1915, displaying a dramatic view of the countryside of Lake Attersee in western Austria, where he spent his summers.
"These landscape paintings were very affectionate to Klimt," Shaw said. "He left Vienna and his patrons and would paint these for himself. They were very daring because he explored different techniques that were very radical."
The experimentation Klimt showed in his landscapes makes them some of the most important and influential of his works and among the rarest.
"Few remain in private collections outside Austria which could ever be sold," Shaw explained.
Klimt's "Church in Cassone -- Landscape with Cypresses," sold in February 2010 for $43 million in London, a record for a Klimt landscape.
"It is possible it could go into a great Asian collection," Shaw said about the painting on sale. "It is also possible that it could go into a great European collection. It has a genuine global appeal."
St. John Sculpture Returned to Jewish Heirs by German Museum
From Bloomberg: St. John Sculpture Returned to Jewish Heirs by German Museum
A limewood sculpture of John the Baptist dating from 1510 will be returned to the U.S.-based heirs of a Jewish art-dealer couple persecuted by the Nazis, the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg said.
The sculpture, housed in the Landesmuseum Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart, was auctioned without the owners’ permission in 1937, said an e-mailed statement from Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Ministry for Science, Research and Art. The couple, Jacob and Rosa Oppenheimer, had fled Berlin in 1933. Their art was impounded in 1935, according to ministry spokesman Jochen Laun.
“The state has a historical and moral responsibility to investigate and give back cultural goods seized from those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime,” Baden-Wuerttemberg Art Minister Theresia Bauer said in the statement.
Germany is one of 44 countries which endorsed the non- binding Washington Principles in 1998. Countries pledged to restitute or reach a settlement with the heirs on art in public collections that was looted by the Nazis.
Jacob Oppenheimer died in exile in Nice in 1941. His wife was imprisoned in a French camp before being deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and murdered that same year.
The sculpture, showing a curly-bearded John the Baptist cradling a lamb, was carved in Bavarian Swabia by an artist whose identity remains unknown. The museum acquired the sculpture in 1985 from a private Swiss collector.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Exclusive - Nazi loot extortion attempt foiled?
From Art History News: Exclusive - Nazi loot extortion attempt foiled?
The Art Newspaper recently reported on an attempt to sell a painting by Jan van Huysum stolen from the Palazzo Pitti in 1943/4. The picture had been evacuated from Florence in 1943, but was 'acquired' by a German soldier in Italy in 1944 'in exchange for food'.
Now, the soldier's grandson wants a EUR2m 'finder's reward' for returning the picture. He is threatening to sell the painting if he doesn't get the money. The demand has come through Edgar Liebrucks, the German lawyer who represented those who handled the Tate's two stolen Turners in 2002-4, for which the museum paid a ransom fee for information of £3.5m.
Liebrucks has proposed that if the picture is worth EUR 10-12m, then it should be sold at auction with 80% of the proceeds going to the museum, and the balance to his client. Liebrucks says:My client needs the money, and it is feared that he will sell the painting elsewhere. I hope this will never happen.
Well, Edgar, I hope it doesn't happen either. After The Art Newspaper reported the story, I contacted The Art Loss Register. Surely, if the picture was not lawfully disposed by the Palazzo Pitti, it cannot legally be sold now? And sure enough, it can't. The picture is now listed on the Art Loss Register's database, ruling out the auction option at least. So if Mr Liebrucks and his client still want to squeeze money out this shoddy deal, they'll have to think of a plan B.
D.C. Circuit to Consider Case of Art Taken by Nazis
This article is from Sep 13, 2011
From The BLT, The Blog of Legal Times: D.C. Circuit to Consider Case of Art Taken by Nazis
The Hungarian government is appealing the denial of its bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed by heirs to a Jewish Hungarian art collector demanding the return of art taken by the Nazis and Hungarian officials during World War II.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle denied the bulk of the Hungarian government's motion to dismiss on Sept. 1, finding that the descendants of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog could sue for the return of pieces of Herzog’s collection currently in the possession of Hungarian cultural institutions.
Attorneys for the Hungarian defendants filed notice (PDF) Monday that they intend to challenge Huvelle’s ruling before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Nixon Peabody partner Thaddeus Stauber, lead counsel for the Hungarian government, said in a statement that his client anticipates “asking the U.S. appellate court to acknowledge that the relevant international agreements and compensation programs in Hungary and the U.S. long ago resolved any modern day claims to the remaining artworks.”
The Hungarian government had argued in its motion to dismiss that it already settled claims to art and other items taken during World War II over the last few decades, including the Herzog collection.
Huvelle did dismiss part of the heirs’ complaint, deferring to a previous ruling by a Hungarian court finding that 11 of the more than 40 pieces in question from the collection did belong to the Hungarian defendants, which include the Hungarian government as well as the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Applied Arts and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
Michael Shuster of New York’s Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, who is representing Herzog’s heirs, said Tuesday morning that “the issues that Judge Huvelle dealt with in her opinion are all well-grounded in…other precedents.”
“It’s unfortunate that they continue to want to avoid addressing the merits,” he said.
In the Sept. 1 opinion (PDF), Huvelle found that Herzog’s heirs offered “substantial and non-frivolous” claims that the Hungarian government violated international law in taking the paintings, meaning the Hungarian defendants are not immune against litigation under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Governments are given wide breadth to take property from its citizens, Huvelle wrote, but in this case, the Hungarian government was accused to taking property from Jewish individuals whose citizenship rights had been stripped away under anti-Semitic laws in effect at the time.
According to the complaint, Herzog’s family had attempted to hide the collection, which included several thousand pieces, after Hungary allied with Nazi Germany, but it was discovered and seized. The plaintiffs in the case are three of Herzog’s great-grandchildren, who are suing on behalf of all of his heirs.
From The BLT, The Blog of Legal Times: D.C. Circuit to Consider Case of Art Taken by Nazis
The Hungarian government is appealing the denial of its bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed by heirs to a Jewish Hungarian art collector demanding the return of art taken by the Nazis and Hungarian officials during World War II.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle denied the bulk of the Hungarian government's motion to dismiss on Sept. 1, finding that the descendants of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog could sue for the return of pieces of Herzog’s collection currently in the possession of Hungarian cultural institutions.
Attorneys for the Hungarian defendants filed notice (PDF) Monday that they intend to challenge Huvelle’s ruling before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Nixon Peabody partner Thaddeus Stauber, lead counsel for the Hungarian government, said in a statement that his client anticipates “asking the U.S. appellate court to acknowledge that the relevant international agreements and compensation programs in Hungary and the U.S. long ago resolved any modern day claims to the remaining artworks.”
The Hungarian government had argued in its motion to dismiss that it already settled claims to art and other items taken during World War II over the last few decades, including the Herzog collection.
Huvelle did dismiss part of the heirs’ complaint, deferring to a previous ruling by a Hungarian court finding that 11 of the more than 40 pieces in question from the collection did belong to the Hungarian defendants, which include the Hungarian government as well as the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Applied Arts and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
Michael Shuster of New York’s Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, who is representing Herzog’s heirs, said Tuesday morning that “the issues that Judge Huvelle dealt with in her opinion are all well-grounded in…other precedents.”
“It’s unfortunate that they continue to want to avoid addressing the merits,” he said.
In the Sept. 1 opinion (PDF), Huvelle found that Herzog’s heirs offered “substantial and non-frivolous” claims that the Hungarian government violated international law in taking the paintings, meaning the Hungarian defendants are not immune against litigation under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
Governments are given wide breadth to take property from its citizens, Huvelle wrote, but in this case, the Hungarian government was accused to taking property from Jewish individuals whose citizenship rights had been stripped away under anti-Semitic laws in effect at the time.
According to the complaint, Herzog’s family had attempted to hide the collection, which included several thousand pieces, after Hungary allied with Nazi Germany, but it was discovered and seized. The plaintiffs in the case are three of Herzog’s great-grandchildren, who are suing on behalf of all of his heirs.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
D.C. Law Firm Sued Over Settlement for Picassos Sold Under Nazi Regime
From The BLT: The Blog of LegalTimes: D.C. Law Firm Sued Over Settlement for Picassos Sold Under Nazi Regime
A Swiss man claiming to be a descendent of the family of a noted German Jewish art collector is accusing a Washington law firm of leaving him out of a settlement over valuable paintings sold during World War II that found their way to U.S. museums.
Thomas Wach, according to a lawsuit (PDF) filed Oct. 7 against Washington-based Byrne Goldenberg & Hamilton, is a descendent of the family of a sister of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, before his death in 1935, owned a massive private art collection that included works by Pablo Picasso and other masters.
Lawsuits filed by heirs of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s family claimed that he had sold pieces from his collection under duress from the Nazi regime in power at the time.
Two of the paintings, by Picasso, ended up at the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation. Various descendents of Mendelssohn-Bartholody, who did not have any children but designated his wife and his sisters as heirs, sued the museums, claiming they had rights to the art.
The heirs were represented by Byrne Goldenberg & Hamilton, which pursued the case in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. There were five sets of heirs, who all agreed to split any recovery equally. In February 2009, just before the case was set to go to trial, the heirs entered into a confidential settlement with the museums.
Wach alleges that the firm never contacted him about the case, even though he is the nephew of one of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s sisters, Katharina Wach. In a letter attached to the complaint, name partner John Byrne told Wach that his connection to the family did not make him eligible to be included in the group of heirs.
Curtis Boykin of Washington’s Douglas & Boykin is lead counsel for Wach. He declined to comment. John Byrne did not immediately return a request for comment.
The suit is the latest to come through Washington federal court over claims to artwork owned by Jewish collectors during World War II. In one pending case, the descendants of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, a Jewish Hungarian collector, are pursuing claims against the Hungarian government over art taken by the Nazis.
A Swiss man claiming to be a descendent of the family of a noted German Jewish art collector is accusing a Washington law firm of leaving him out of a settlement over valuable paintings sold during World War II that found their way to U.S. museums.
Thomas Wach, according to a lawsuit (PDF) filed Oct. 7 against Washington-based Byrne Goldenberg & Hamilton, is a descendent of the family of a sister of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, before his death in 1935, owned a massive private art collection that included works by Pablo Picasso and other masters.
Lawsuits filed by heirs of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s family claimed that he had sold pieces from his collection under duress from the Nazi regime in power at the time.
Two of the paintings, by Picasso, ended up at the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation. Various descendents of Mendelssohn-Bartholody, who did not have any children but designated his wife and his sisters as heirs, sued the museums, claiming they had rights to the art.
The heirs were represented by Byrne Goldenberg & Hamilton, which pursued the case in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. There were five sets of heirs, who all agreed to split any recovery equally. In February 2009, just before the case was set to go to trial, the heirs entered into a confidential settlement with the museums.
Wach alleges that the firm never contacted him about the case, even though he is the nephew of one of Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s sisters, Katharina Wach. In a letter attached to the complaint, name partner John Byrne told Wach that his connection to the family did not make him eligible to be included in the group of heirs.
Curtis Boykin of Washington’s Douglas & Boykin is lead counsel for Wach. He declined to comment. John Byrne did not immediately return a request for comment.
The suit is the latest to come through Washington federal court over claims to artwork owned by Jewish collectors during World War II. In one pending case, the descendants of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, a Jewish Hungarian collector, are pursuing claims against the Hungarian government over art taken by the Nazis.
Florida Gallery Investigates Nazi Stolen Art
From Pri's The World: Florida Gallery Investigates Nazi Stolen Art
Anchor Marco Werman talks to Chucha Barber, CEO of the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Fla., about a 16th century Italian painting on display now.
While the painting was on display, the museum found out it may have been stolen from an Italian family by the Nazis during World War II.
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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Today in Washington US officials formerly returned a painting to the French government. It was a nineteenth century canvas stolen from a French town by German troops at the end of WWII. The painting changed hands many times before ending up in a New York art gallery. That scenario has played out many times in recent years at various American art institutions. It’s happening right now at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida. A sixteenth century Italian painting on display there is at the center of an ownership dispute. Chucha Barber is the Brogan Museum’s Chief Executive Officer. She says the painting came as part of a loan from a museum in Milan, Italy.
Chucha Barber: The Brogan Museum borrowed from the Pinacoteca di Brera 50 beautiful masterpieces. And one of them is alleged to have been stolen by Nazis from a private family. And so when the exhibition concluded 49 of the paintings were returned to the Pinacoteca di Brera, but one remains on display at the Brogan Museum.
Werman: So tell us about the painting, what’s its name, who painted it and what do we see in it?
Barber: Well, the translation of the title of the painting was presented to us as Christ with a cross and a Rascal. But the painting has other titles. And it is a beautiful painting by an artist known as Romano, and the cloak that Christ is wearing in the painting is a beautiful tangerine satin. And what makes this painting so brilliant in my opinion is that the artist truly captured the sheen of the satin with his brush strokes. It’s just amazing painting.
Werman: So the painting is on display now. Is it attracting more visitors to the museum?
Barber: It is indeed. The US Attorney’s office wanted the painting to stay in the United States, and so we have an extension for this painting through November 20. When we received permission to maintain custody of the painting and put it on display, we relocated the painting from where it was originally hung in the gallery to a very secure environment. And before we could finalize its relocation we literally had people lining up at the door wanting to come in to see the painting. So yes, it has generated interest and people are coming to the museum expressly to see the painting.
Werman: Where are the grandchildren of the painting’s presumed owners today? Do you know and what are they saying about where it should be?
Barber: I have only had direct contact with one of the grandchildren and he live in London. I know from my conversations with him that he has a sibling that lives in France, and I know he has another sibling that also lives in the United Kingdom. And what Lionel Salem, one of the grandchildren, has shared with me is that he and his family are immensely grateful for the opportunity to have discussion about the recovery of the painting for the family, but he says there are five family members that have a vested interest in the painting and you can’t cut the painting into five pieces. So I believe that the family is very receptive to an opportunity for the Pinacoteca di Brera to continue to have ownership of the painting and display it with some mutually agreed upon text about its history if they receive appropriate compensation.
Werman: And you, Ms. Barber, do you secretly hope this masterpiece by Girolamo Romano will never leave the Brogan?
Barber: No, I do not hope that. I hope that if what is alleged to be true, and I personally believe that it is, I believe that the family deserves to have this matter resolved in their favor. And I believe that the family very much wants this to be a teachable moment. This is a great opportunity to have students and teachers talking about the roles of museums in their communities and repatriation of objects to Native Americans, objects that are deemed to have been stolen from one government or another, it’s all a very, very interesting conversation and I hope it drives home the importance of museums in our communities and in our nation.
Werman: Chucha Barber with the Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science in Tallahassee, Florida. Thanks so much for your time.
Barber: You’re so welcome.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
American International Fine Art Fair returns to Palm Beach, Florida in February 2012
From ArtDaily.org: American International Fine Art Fair returns to Palm Beach, Florida in February 2012
PALM BEACH, FL.- Now in its 16th year, American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF) is one of the premier art, antique and jewelry fair in the United States. In 2012, AIFAF will again gather prestigious galleries and distinguished collectors from around the world during its return to the Palm Beach County Convention Center February 4th-12th, 2012, with a VIP Preview on February 3rd.
The carefully selected presentation will include international dealers representing disciplines of fine art from classical antiquity to contemporary, and an extensive collection of haute and period jewelry. The fair is fully vetted by leading museum curators and experts.
Continuing last year's successful format, a full schedule of daily activities to coincide with the exhibitions will be included. These activities are comprised of informative lectures from highly respected museum curators and art experts, as well as cocktail parties and other social events.
To ensure all fair attendees receive full knowledge of the outstanding art exhibited at the fair, AIFAF will again partner with Corfield Morris to offer art advisory services to any visitor throughout the duration of the fair. Their team of independent expert advisers will be on hand to guide guests through the fair or straight to whatever they seek.
New to AIFAF in 2012, world-renowned Fabergé will present a special exhibition and lecture series – “Faberge: The Rebirth of an Icon”- lecture by Geza von Habsburg. Paying homage to the legendary Imperial Eggs created by Peter Carl Fabergé for the Romanov family, and celebrating the Egg as a timeless universal symbol of life, Fabergé has designed a collection of one-of-a-kind High Jewelry Egg Pendants, Les Fameux de Fabergé. Each design illustrates a traditional Russian proverb, through complex, multi-layered concepts brought to life by the finest craftsmanship in the world today. The first of these creations launched in Paris during Couture Week, July 2011, marking the beginning of a series of twelve High Jewelry Egg Pendants, one for every month of the year. Each pendant, a wearable object of desire, involves a lengthy, exacting and in many cases pioneering fabrication process, pushing boundaries of both design and manufacture, and taking contemporary craftsmanship to a new level of sophistication.
Among highlights for AIFAF’s lecture series this year, Victoria Wyeth, granddaughter of “America’s Painter” Andrew Wyeth will present a special lecture and presentation. Her unique personal perspective offers memories and insights unavailable before to the public. Roger Ward, former Chief Curator at the Norton Museum of Art, will present “Who owns that art? Conspicuous Cases of Nazi-Era Restitution” and “Four Rediscovered Old Master Works; Leonardo, Raphael, Breughel and Velazquez.” Bruce Helander, Editor-and-Chief of the Art Economist, will moderate a roundtable discussion and Erin Coe, Curator at the Hyde Collection, will present an informative lecture, “Georgia O’Keeffe at Lake George.”
PALM BEACH, FL.- Now in its 16th year, American International Fine Art Fair (AIFAF) is one of the premier art, antique and jewelry fair in the United States. In 2012, AIFAF will again gather prestigious galleries and distinguished collectors from around the world during its return to the Palm Beach County Convention Center February 4th-12th, 2012, with a VIP Preview on February 3rd.
The carefully selected presentation will include international dealers representing disciplines of fine art from classical antiquity to contemporary, and an extensive collection of haute and period jewelry. The fair is fully vetted by leading museum curators and experts.
Continuing last year's successful format, a full schedule of daily activities to coincide with the exhibitions will be included. These activities are comprised of informative lectures from highly respected museum curators and art experts, as well as cocktail parties and other social events.
To ensure all fair attendees receive full knowledge of the outstanding art exhibited at the fair, AIFAF will again partner with Corfield Morris to offer art advisory services to any visitor throughout the duration of the fair. Their team of independent expert advisers will be on hand to guide guests through the fair or straight to whatever they seek.
New to AIFAF in 2012, world-renowned Fabergé will present a special exhibition and lecture series – “Faberge: The Rebirth of an Icon”- lecture by Geza von Habsburg. Paying homage to the legendary Imperial Eggs created by Peter Carl Fabergé for the Romanov family, and celebrating the Egg as a timeless universal symbol of life, Fabergé has designed a collection of one-of-a-kind High Jewelry Egg Pendants, Les Fameux de Fabergé. Each design illustrates a traditional Russian proverb, through complex, multi-layered concepts brought to life by the finest craftsmanship in the world today. The first of these creations launched in Paris during Couture Week, July 2011, marking the beginning of a series of twelve High Jewelry Egg Pendants, one for every month of the year. Each pendant, a wearable object of desire, involves a lengthy, exacting and in many cases pioneering fabrication process, pushing boundaries of both design and manufacture, and taking contemporary craftsmanship to a new level of sophistication.
Among highlights for AIFAF’s lecture series this year, Victoria Wyeth, granddaughter of “America’s Painter” Andrew Wyeth will present a special lecture and presentation. Her unique personal perspective offers memories and insights unavailable before to the public. Roger Ward, former Chief Curator at the Norton Museum of Art, will present “Who owns that art? Conspicuous Cases of Nazi-Era Restitution” and “Four Rediscovered Old Master Works; Leonardo, Raphael, Breughel and Velazquez.” Bruce Helander, Editor-and-Chief of the Art Economist, will moderate a roundtable discussion and Erin Coe, Curator at the Hyde Collection, will present an informative lecture, “Georgia O’Keeffe at Lake George.”
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Shame of the Galleries: Stained Stein, Purloined Picasso
From HuffPostArts: The Shame of the Galleries: Stained Stein, Purloined Picasso
San Francisco has been awash in art this season. Three major shows made the pioneers of modern art hard to avoid: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA)'s "The Steins Collect," San Francisco Jewish Museum's "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," and the de Young Museum's "Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso."
But instead of a wonderful learning experience, the shows were merely pictures at an exhibition -- a lost opportunity to look at the origins and meaning of art. A teachable moment consciously abandoned. By what they knowingly chose to ignore, these shows lied to us.
The Stein shows were the most egregious. In the early 20th Century, during the moveable feast in Paris and during the war in their homes in the south of France, the Stein family had befriended and supported many developing artists as they forged modern art's form. Their support was certainly welcome, though problematic and not without strings. The Steins had the opportunity to collect substantial pieces which became quite valuable.
The Bay Area, as a home of Gertrude Stein and with its sizable LBGT population, seemed an appropriate venue for the celebration of the Stein family collection. Gertrude Stein, and her long time partner Alice B. Toklas, were in one way at least models for out-of-the-closet lesbianism. Sadly, they were not models in other important ways, ways in which the museums conveniently chose to ignore.
Their collection, particularly of impressionists, was certainly dazzling. But all that glitters is not gold. The Stein exhibits left out some of the most salient facts about Gertrude Stein. How was Stein able to keep her magnificent collection intact and thrive in occupied France as a Jew and lesbian while gays and Jews were systematically rounded up and killed, and their possessions, especially art, seized?
Less heroic than her unabashed lesbianism was Stein's longtime support for Adolf Hitler. As early as 1934 she shared her admiration for Hitler in the New York Times Magazine, campaigning for Hitler to be given the Nobel Peace Prize:
"I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize," she says, "because he is removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left elements, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace."
This was not merely an aberrant position or just a championing of Hitler alone. She supported both fascist dictator of Spain Francisco Franco and the Nazi-backed Vichy government of France, comparing collaborationist traitor Marshal Pétain to George Washington. She intervened on behalf of captured Gestapo. Indeed, it was Alice B. Toklas who funded their friend and protector Bernard Fäy's breakout from prison. Fäy was charged with being a Gestapo agent responsible for deporting nearly 1,000 people to the concentration camps in Germany.
Yet the SF MOMA and the San Francisco Jewish Museum chose not to deal with this "complicated" issue. Instead they collaborated just as did Stein, closeting her Nazi sympathies and actions.
Not to be outdone, the Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum was a model of obscurantism. There was not a single descriptive note to any of the works. I suppose we were even lucky the works were titled. But notes on their meaning, development, relationship, or the artists intent were remarkable by their absence. Unlike museums in Europe, the Barcelona Picasso Museum or the French National Picasso Museum (the very museum from whence these pictures originated), for example, we are given nothing explaining the politics and relationships which suffused his work, his support for the Left in the Spanish Civil War, his deep anti-fascism, his identification with the oppressed and his prominent membership in the Communist Party.
It is almost cruel to view Picasso's work without explanation, for instance his great "Massacre in Korea," his literal homage to Goya's "Third of May, 1808," without so much as a hint of its parentage or reference to the 1950 Korean War mass-killing of men, women and a large number of children by American and South Korean forces. Picasso, one of the most political of artists, has been neutered, shrink-wrapped, comodified and de-contextualized.
So at the end of the exhibitions, we are left with galleries empty of meaning. Three exhibits of stellar paintings that could have opened a window into their times and issues. But three museums without the courage or energy to look at the meaning and development of art. Form without substance...only pictures at an exhibition.
San Francisco has been awash in art this season. Three major shows made the pioneers of modern art hard to avoid: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA)'s "The Steins Collect," San Francisco Jewish Museum's "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," and the de Young Museum's "Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso."
But instead of a wonderful learning experience, the shows were merely pictures at an exhibition -- a lost opportunity to look at the origins and meaning of art. A teachable moment consciously abandoned. By what they knowingly chose to ignore, these shows lied to us.
The Stein shows were the most egregious. In the early 20th Century, during the moveable feast in Paris and during the war in their homes in the south of France, the Stein family had befriended and supported many developing artists as they forged modern art's form. Their support was certainly welcome, though problematic and not without strings. The Steins had the opportunity to collect substantial pieces which became quite valuable.
The Bay Area, as a home of Gertrude Stein and with its sizable LBGT population, seemed an appropriate venue for the celebration of the Stein family collection. Gertrude Stein, and her long time partner Alice B. Toklas, were in one way at least models for out-of-the-closet lesbianism. Sadly, they were not models in other important ways, ways in which the museums conveniently chose to ignore.
Their collection, particularly of impressionists, was certainly dazzling. But all that glitters is not gold. The Stein exhibits left out some of the most salient facts about Gertrude Stein. How was Stein able to keep her magnificent collection intact and thrive in occupied France as a Jew and lesbian while gays and Jews were systematically rounded up and killed, and their possessions, especially art, seized?
Less heroic than her unabashed lesbianism was Stein's longtime support for Adolf Hitler. As early as 1934 she shared her admiration for Hitler in the New York Times Magazine, campaigning for Hitler to be given the Nobel Peace Prize:
"I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize," she says, "because he is removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left elements, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace."
This was not merely an aberrant position or just a championing of Hitler alone. She supported both fascist dictator of Spain Francisco Franco and the Nazi-backed Vichy government of France, comparing collaborationist traitor Marshal Pétain to George Washington. She intervened on behalf of captured Gestapo. Indeed, it was Alice B. Toklas who funded their friend and protector Bernard Fäy's breakout from prison. Fäy was charged with being a Gestapo agent responsible for deporting nearly 1,000 people to the concentration camps in Germany.
Yet the SF MOMA and the San Francisco Jewish Museum chose not to deal with this "complicated" issue. Instead they collaborated just as did Stein, closeting her Nazi sympathies and actions.
Not to be outdone, the Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum was a model of obscurantism. There was not a single descriptive note to any of the works. I suppose we were even lucky the works were titled. But notes on their meaning, development, relationship, or the artists intent were remarkable by their absence. Unlike museums in Europe, the Barcelona Picasso Museum or the French National Picasso Museum (the very museum from whence these pictures originated), for example, we are given nothing explaining the politics and relationships which suffused his work, his support for the Left in the Spanish Civil War, his deep anti-fascism, his identification with the oppressed and his prominent membership in the Communist Party.
It is almost cruel to view Picasso's work without explanation, for instance his great "Massacre in Korea," his literal homage to Goya's "Third of May, 1808," without so much as a hint of its parentage or reference to the 1950 Korean War mass-killing of men, women and a large number of children by American and South Korean forces. Picasso, one of the most political of artists, has been neutered, shrink-wrapped, comodified and de-contextualized.
So at the end of the exhibitions, we are left with galleries empty of meaning. Three exhibits of stellar paintings that could have opened a window into their times and issues. But three museums without the courage or energy to look at the meaning and development of art. Form without substance...only pictures at an exhibition.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
On travel til Wednesday
I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.
Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.
Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Reminder: Lafayette, PA University Conference on Nazi Looted Art
From Caldendar.Layfayette.edu. Lafayette Pennsylvania: Nazi Plunder and Restitution: Conference on Nazi-Looted Art at Lafayette College
When: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - Friday, October 28, 2011Where: Various campus locationsPrice: FreeThe conference begins the evening of Wednesday, October 26 and concludes at 1:00 on Friday, October 28. The schedule:
Wednesday, 5:30 pm: Dinner with speakers and invited guests
Wednesday, 7 pm: Showing of “The Rape of Europa” followed by a discussion/lecture by Nicole Newnham, one of the movie’s producers/directors/writers
Thursday, noon: Brown bag lecture by Marc Masurovsky (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and co-founder of Holocaust Art Restitution Project): “A Primer on Nazi/Fascist Cultural Plunder and the Never-Ending Quest for Justice in the Post-War Era”
Thursday, 3 pm : Lecture by Victoria Reed (Monica S. Sadler Curator for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): “Nazi-Era Provenance: The Museum’s Perspective and the Researcher’s Role”
Oct. 27, 4:15 pm: Keynote speech by Professor Jonathan Petropoulos (John V. Croul Professor of European History, Claremont McKenna College): “Nazi Art Plundering, Post-War Restitution, and the Restitution Field Going Forward”
Thursday, 5:30–7 pm: Dinner with speakers, faculty, and students.
Thursday, 7:30 pm: Lecture by Lucian Simmons (Worldwide Director of Provenance and Restitution at Sotheby’s, New York)
Friday, noon: Brown bag lunch lecture and discussion with Austrian Ambassador Hans Winkler (2011 Max Kade Distinguished Lecturer, sponsored by the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Max Kade Foundation): "Late Justice: Austria's efforts to deal with Nazi-looted art in public museums and collections"
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