Nazi-looted Art at Israel Museum
Two Special Exhibitions Present Works of Questionable Ownership
Two special exhibitions at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem explore art looted by the Nazis during World War II and the recent efforts made to repatriate them.
Looking for Owners: Custody, Research, and Restitution During World War II and Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust in the Israel Museum, concurrently on view at Jerusalem's Israel Museum (February 19-June 3, 2008), bring together more than 100 works looted by the Nazis during World War II and the recent scholarly efforts undertaken to resolve their issues of provenance (ownership history).
The Nazi Looting of Art During World War II
Before the Second World War, German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) expressed his desire to exhibit all of Europe's great artworks in his hometown of Linz, Austria. He employed numerous art experts to seek out so-called Aryan masterpieces that left German collections after 1500 and return them to the Third Reich. Hitler authorized the plundering of public, private and Jewish property beginning in 1938, which included the systematic confiscation of prominent collections and forced sales of art dealers' important holdings. The works were later found hidden in German and Austrian castles, depots, museum storerooms, private homes and salt mines, making the task of repatriating them to their rightful owners and legitimate heirs a difficult one.
Looking for Owners...
The first exhibition, Looking for Owners: Custody, Research, and Restitution of Art Stolen in France During World War II, is comprised of 53 paintings by such European artists as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), Claude Monet (1840-1926) and Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Some 2000 objects that have unclear provenances or simply were not looted in France by the Nazis during the Second World War are collectively known as the Musées Nationaux Récupération (MNR). The show's works, on view or stored at the Musée du Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Centre Georges-Pompidou and other French institutions, come from the MNR, whose own complex history, that of its paintings and efforts over the last 10 years to repatriate the objects are also explored.
The Mattéoli Commission, established in 1997 to examine issues of Jewish property restitution in France, recommended this unprecedented presentation of some of the MNR's holdings at the Israel Museum. The paintings are arranged according to:
- works looted from unknown owners;
- those confiscated from Jewish families that were returned after the war and subsequently re-gifted to or purchased by France;
- works of unknown provenance;
- paintings involved in Nazi transactions; and
- those purchased by German museums and private collectors in the French art market during World War II.
Orphaned Art...
The second show, Orphaned Art: Looted Art from the Holocaust in the Israel Museum, includes more than 50 of 1200 paintings, drawings, prints, books and Jewish ceremonial objects of unknown provenance brought to Israel during the early 1950s and held by the Jerusalem institution. Artists represented include Jan Both (ca. 1618-1652), Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800-1882), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), Marc Chagall (1887-1985) and Egon Schiele (1890-1918).
Heirless and unclaimed works of art and Judaica looted from Jews or Jewish communities were released from central collecting points in Germany and given to the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) in 1948. Released to various museums, synagogues and other Jewish organizations worldwide through the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction (JCR), many of them arrived at the Bezalel National Museum, known as the Israel Museum since 1965. This collection includes some 250 paintings, another 250 works on paper and 700 Judaic objects. To this day, their conservation and restitution are ongoing processes by the museum's staff members.
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