[MSN] Nazi Loot, Antiquities, Art Buying: Cornell Museum's Robinson

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Nazi Loot, Antiquities, Art Buying: Cornell Museum's Robinson

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Frank Robinson is director of the Herbert F. 
Johnson Museum of Art, which lured 10,973 Cornell University students to 
classes and tours in the past year. While he has only a $3.5 million 
budget and $500,000 a year to buy art, his concerns mirror those of 
museums around the world.

Adding to the collection, Robinson shops at art fairs from Maastricht, 
the Netherlands, to Art Basel Miami Beach. In Ithaca, New York, he 
presides over research into many of the museum's 32,000 objects to 
ascertain if any were stolen by Nazis or smuggled off excavation sites.

Here's what Robinson, a tall man of 67 with a sweep of gray hair and 
spectacles, said in meetings at Maastricht and in telephone interviews.

Sandler: Can a museum still find bargains at art fairs, after a 10-year 
run-up in prices?

Robinson: My definition of a bargain is something that's a good work of 
art at a reasonable price.

We found three things at Maastricht this year. A watercolor by Charles 
Leandre cost us about $7,500. Works on paper are a high priority for the 
museum as we can't afford paintings.

Sandler: What are you doing about looking for Nazi loot in your collection?

Robinson: A student we hired as an intern spent 1-1/2 years going 
through the files, and is keeping on. Each vulnerable painting and 
drawing and object was researched, seeing what names were mentioned -- 
dealers or looted families. All museums are retentive. We want to 
preserve and protect our collections. But we are also citizens of the 
world, with moral concerns.

Cubist Scene

We have a 1915 cubist scene of a port by Jean Metzinger. The intern 
found it had once belonged to Leonce Rosenberg. He was a Paris dealer 
whose inventory was looted by the Nazis, when Paris was occupied in the 
1940s. We went to the Rosenberg family, who were all looted by the 
Nazis. They hired Hector Feliciano, who wrote a book on Holocaust art.

He couldn't come to a conclusion. We don't know if it was looted. We 
kept the work. Whenever it's on exhibit, we put on a label with the 
story of the provenance, and we have it on our Web site.

Sandler: You've had some mishaps in your efforts to acquire more 
antiquities?

Robinson: At the Palm Beach fair in February, I saw a wonderful pair of 
Roman bronzes, 2nd century A.D. They were two dogs, just right for us at 
$22,500. It was a reputable dealer. We went back and forth and he just 
couldn't offer me proof that the provenance went back far enough.

African Art

Another alumnus offered us over 100 pieces of Nok sculpture (which were 
turned down.) That culture of southern Nigeria goes back over 2,000 
years. We have 800 pieces of African art, but this would have put us on 
the world map. We consulted a specialist at Cornell, and it was clear 
that these works were undocumented, excavated unscientifically and 
perhaps illegally, perhaps smuggled out of Nigeria.

Sandler: Some museums say Italy's on a witch hunt.

Robinson: It's not a witch hunt. Italy has been deprived of heritage 
items like the Euphronios vase in the Metropolitan Museum, and I can 
understand the Greeks wanting back the Elgin Marbles from the British 
Museum. This is their heritage, what defines them. What if the U.S. 
Declaration of Independence was in a Paris library? We'd want it back 
and would bring tremendous pressure to bear on France.

This is phase one of the process -- a recognition that countries of 
origin have rights, and the return of some things.

There won't be a total transfer of title. Coins are multiples, you can't 
trace them. We bought an 8th-century Indonesian Javanese bronze deity 
three or four years ago. We sent a photo to the ministry of culture in 
Indonesia, who sent it on to a museum. They said, by all means, keep it. 
We have a couple dozen.

Ideally, only great inheritance pieces will go back. The Met will return 
the Euphronios vase.

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