Monthly Art Report

Monthly Art ReportMrs. MacLeod, ART I

“Do the Right Thing”, Sylvia HochfieldSeptember, 2005

ARTnews

February, 1998Page 66

Summary:

This article is about the controversy about art displaced during World War II.

Listing:

1. The article opens with the statement “When writing on the subject of the Holocaust, one must imagine that one is in the presence of burning children” by historian Yehuda Bauer read at a recent Art Dealers Association of America symposium on the subject of war loot.
2. The statement was read by speaker Jonathan Petropoulos, a historian at LoyolaCollege.
3. Petropoulos called for cooperation among dealers, collectors, museum officials, and scholars to research artworks and return them to their rightful owners.
4. The audience, which included many art dealers had many questions about what to do if a work was purchased in good faith only to find out it had been looted from a Holocaust victim. Some collectors may be inclined to turn down requests to lend their works for fear someone might see and claim them.
5. The new Commission for Art Recovery was formed as part of the World Jewish Restitution Organization. Their goal is “to recover art taken from Jewish families and Jewish communities during the Nazi era, to return it to heirs if possible, and to reclaim it for Jewish charities if it is heirless”.
6. The director, Constance Lowenthal says “I understand a good-faith purchaser’s point of view. My job is to overcome their reluctance. We’re going to have to find a way between what is feasible economically and what is correct morally.”
7. The Holocaust Art Restitution Project, started by the National Jewish Museum in WashingtonD.C. will be a clearinghouse for information on stolen works.
8. The InternationalResearchCenter for the Documentation of Wartime Losses is being organized by Elisabeth Rosenberg Clark. Her grandfather was Paul Rosenberg, whose famous Paris gallery was seized by the Nazis.
9. The Holocaust Victims Redress Act, passed by the Senate, calls for all governments to facilitate the return to its rightful owners of property confiscated by the Nazis.
10. While these groups have proliferated in the US, the Russian Parliament refuses to allow the return the largest amount of looted art which is housed in Russian museums.

Evaluation:

This was a really interesting article regarding artwork stolen by the Nazis during World War II. I have only read a little bit on the subject, so most of the information was new to me. This is definitely a subject I would read more about.

The article was well written and contained a lot of information for a relatively short article. There was only one photograph of a relief sculpture by Andrea della Robbia that was taken from Germany to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II and a photograph of Constance Lowenthal, the director of the Commission for Art Recovery.