[CPProt.net] F.C. Gets a Peek at Pillaged Art for 'First Friday'

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

F.C. Gets a Peek at Pillaged Art for 'First Friday'
By Darien Bates 

In August of last year armed robbers entered the Munch museum in Oslo,
Norway in broad daylight and stole Edvard Munch's famous painting "The
Scream." To date, the painting, one of the less important versions of the
famous impressionist portrait, remains at large. It is unlikely, however,
that the painting would ever be bought and displayed by any public
collector. Like any stolen good, it would be claimed and returned the minute
it went public. So it might come as a surprise that in private collections
and public galleries from Europe to the United States, stolen art is
routinely displayed every day, with very little concern by curators for whom
the rightful owners might be. The works in question are among the hundreds
of thousands of pieces that were systematically pillaged from homes and
institutions throughout Europe by the Nazis before and during World War II.
At Falls Church's monthly "First Friday" celebration last Friday, Marc
Masurovsky and Ori Soltes presented an exhibit, "Fruits of Plunder," a
collection of microfilm prints that detail the Nazi plunder of art, and the
work that has, and has not, been done since the end of WWII to return the
art to its rightful owners. The exhibition, along with a brief talk by the
two, was held at the Art and Frame of Falls Church.

When Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party took power in Germany in 1933, plans to
move into that nation's art world were already underway. At first, the
process was just about defining art, not stealing it. As part of creating a
German national culture, Hitler identified he felt should be considered
legitimate art, describing, for example, impressionist, and abstract styles
as "degenerate." 

As the movement to isolate and eventually eliminate parts of the German
population heated up, the invasion into art went from defining it, to
stealing it, and in a very systematic and thorough way. With the Nazi
government defining Jews as non-citizens, it claimed their property rights
were null and void. This political definition led to the massive theft of
Jewish property, including many priceless works of art. 

Once the war started, the theft of art and property moved beyond Germany
into the conquered countries. Among the most heavily affected places was
France . Soltes said that Hitler had it in his mind that taking art from
France was just retrieving the things taken by Napoleon a century before. 

But the systemic approach, typical of the Nazi party, was far more organized
than the kind of pillaging often seen during war. Under Alfred Rosenberg's
leadership the Nazis created an organization dedicated to looting Europe ,
with separate branches for different kinds of art, from sculpture, to
furniture, to Jewish art, that would be compiled and studied, as one studies
the artifacts of an extinct civilization. 

But the precision of the Nazis' theft and categorizing also meant that when
the war ended it should have been easier to return the stolen art. There
were pictures and documentation detailing when and from where things were
taken. But in the confusion after the war, only a tiny percentage of the art
was returned. 

When the U.S. Army liberated Europe, it couldn't take responsibility for
finding the rightful owner of each piece of art. Instead it returned the art
to the government of each country and expected those governments to find the
owners. 

For the large, well documented collections, like those in major museums in
Paris featuring first tier quality art, the evidence of ownership was so
massive there was no question but that it would be returned. 

But many of the second and third tier works, or even lower quality pieces,
ripped from private citizens' homes never made it back to their original
owners. In many cases the owners had perished during the war. But there were
also times when victims of Nazi persecution, or their relatives, returned to
look for the paintings and other artwork that used to hang on the walls of
their parlors, with nothing to denote their ownership but personal memories.


For these people, the work of getting their property back has been far from
easy. 

Mazurovsky, who works at the National Holocaust Museum, said he first got
involved with the issue of returning plundered art when he was working as a
special investigator studying war crimes by the Nazis. He discovered that
many war criminals were actually using plundered art as a way to pay for
their escape from Germany after Germany surrendered. 

With parents who were both artists, Mazurovsky said that he was already
familiar with the art world and wanted to get a better understanding of what
had happened to the art that the Nazis had plundered. 

What he discovered was that in France alone, over a half million pieces of
art had been plundered, 80,000 of which were of museum quality. After the
war two-thirds to three-quarters of that had been returned. Across Europe
plundered art numbered in the millions, with less and less being returned
the further east one went. 

What Mazurovsky eventually discovered was that there were many pieces of
stolen art that actually wound in museums throughout Europe, and that some
that had even made it across the Atlantic and now sit in the collections of
some of the largest art institutions in the United States. The original
ownership is listed as unknown. 

Mazurovsky said that people looking to reclaim family artwork have faced
resistance from these institutions, many of whom are unwilling to give up
these pieces easily, especially when hard evidence is difficult to come by. 

Mazurovsky and Soltes encountered this resistance first hand when they tried
to present their "Fruits of Plunder" exhibition at the Chicago Institute of
Art. Though it was greeted with enthusiasm at first, when worries arose that
the show would spark controversy about the ownership rights of pieces in the
institute's own collection, the exhibition was cancelled. 

Ironically, Mazurovsky said that many people who eventually reclaim their
family's art don't end up keeping it. In most cases they end up donating it
or selling it. But just knowing that they were able to get back something
that had been taken during one of history's darkest moments is a powerful
feeling. 

"The effort is important," Mazurovsky said, describing it as an act of
closure. "It's great if it can get to that point [where rightful owners can
reclaim the art]. They need to know they can do it." 

http://www.fcnp.com/