Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Museum Worthy: Nazi Art Plunder in Postwar Western Europe

Museum Worthy: Nazi Art Plunder in Postwar Western Europe

Campbell, Elizabeth
Adams, Holly
Adams, Holly

Audio Book

Art History

ISBN13: 9798874788407
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: May 14 2024
Weight: 0.45
Height: 1.20 Width: 5.60 Depth: 5.40
Language: English
Art looting is commonly recognized as a central feature of Nazi expropriation. After the war, the famed Monuments Men (and women) recovered several hundred thousand pieces from the Germans' makeshift repositories. Well publicized restitution cases, such as that of Gustav Klimt's luminous painting featured in the film Woman in Gold, illustrate the legacy of Nazi looting in the art world today. But what happened to looted art that was never returned to its rightful owners?

In France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, postwar governments appropriated the most coveted unclaimed works for display in various public buildings. Following cultural property norms of the time, the governments created custodianships over the unclaimed pieces, without using archives in their possession to carry out thorough provenance (ownership) research. This policy extended the dispossession of Jewish owners wrought by the Nazis and their collaborators well into the twenty-first century. The custodianships included paintings by traditional and modern masters, such as Rembrandt, Cranach, Rubens, Tiepolo, Picasso, and Matisse. This appropriation of plundered assets endured without controversy until the mid-1990s, when activists and journalists began challenging the governments' right to hold these items, ushering in a period of cultural property litigation that endures to this day.

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