Solidarity is an aspiration devoutly to be wished

by Marc Masurovsky

If you search for a definition of the word “solidarity”, this is what you find:

“Unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group.”

In other words, “solidarity” requires unity of feeling or action amongst individuals and entities that share a common interest and support one another. It also implies that they all work together to achieve a common objective. Let’s apply the concept of “solidarity” to the interwoven notions of cultural plunder, art looting, and the restitution, repatriation, return of those plundered cultural goods to their rightful owners, be they individuals, groups, entities, or governments.

Past history teaches us that governments, entities, groups and individuals have systematically deprived others of their artistic, cultural and religious objects for a variety of reasons, ranging from greed and avarice to naked hatred of the rightful owners for reasons of race, gender, creed, and/or ethnicity. The international community, in all of its wisdom and desire to improve the lot of people around the globe, has agreed that it is wrong, illegal, and immoral to steal artistic, cultural and religious objects. If one does this, justice needs to prevail in part through the recovery, restitution, repatriation of these objects to their rightful owners.

Colonial expansionism unleashed cultural and other heinous crimes against communities living in areas coveted by the colonialists, resulting in the deprivation of life, identity, and culture for millions of people around the world. Successive wars fueled by racial and ethnic hatred of others have provoked the deaths of tens of millions of individuals and the outright theft of the property of those who were targeted for physical elimination and removal from the surface of Planet Earth. Make no mistake, these conflicts are still with us today and they are always accompanied by crimes against the culture, identity, and beliefs of the victims (case in point: the 1990s wars in the Western Balkans, and currently in Libya, Ukraine and Yemen.)

Since the 1990s, individuals and entities have come forward to hasten the restitution and/or repatriation of these looted objects wherever they may have ended up, either in private hands or in State-controlled collections and institutions. They focus separately on:

-the confiscations of Jewish-owned property displaced by the Nazis and their allies between 1933-1945;

-the expropriations of indigenous cultural objects through colonial conquest and occupation;

-the systematic illegal extraction of archaeological objects from source nations; and

-the plunder of Native American communities and First Nations in North America.

We have identified four categories of looted or plundered cultural goods:

1/ goods forcibly removed from geographical areas targeted for seizure and exploitation by colonial powers;

2/ goods forcibly removed by State authorities, with the help of military, police, and parastatal forces, from communities living within State borders;

3/ goods forcibly extracted from the territories of nations for ideological or commercial reasons under the cover of military conflicts or civil strife;

4/ goods forcibly removed from their rightful owners during acts of genocide, most notably during the Nazi era, the Holocaust and World War II.

Until the early years of the 21st century, there was no perceptible dialogue between the advocates of justice and restitution representing these four groups of looted cultural goods.

Archaeologists and so-called source nations worked in their corner, denouncing the irreparable loss of antiquities which ended up inevitably in private and public collections. Mainstream domestic and international Jewish organizations were never keen on seeking the actual physical restitution of objects plundered from Jewish victims between 1933-1945, preferring instead global schemes by which victims and their families would receive the equivalent of a “check in the mail.” Indigenous communities plundered during periods of domestic territorial expansionism and national unification (some call it “progress”) were left to their own devices for decades before there was widespread outrage at their plight. The systematic and on-going looting of their communities continues to benefit private collectors and cultural institutions worldwide. Advocates and organizations representing these four categories have worked separately in their silos, competing against one another for the attention of private donors, foundations and governments to enlist their aid in furthering the cause of their “clients.”

It is difficult to find instances of “solidarity” between these four categories and their respective communities, although, in theory, they agree on the common goal of restitution, repatriation, and return of looted objects to their rightful owners. Their professed mutual interest does not seem to include the possibility of reaching out to representatives of the “other categories.” Doing so would lead to a greater good by merging their separate agendas under the larger umbrella of a unified approach to the restitution, repatriation, and return of these objects to their rightful owners.

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) was created in September 1997 to document Jewish cultural losses between 1933-1945 and the postwar fate of unrestituted looted objects. Our concern has always been to address in an open public discussion the question of cultural plunder in all its forms, regardless of when and where it occurred. More than 13 years ago, HARP crossed the bridge to get acquainted with the cultural heritage community, including archaeologists, anthropologists and other professionals documenting ancient cultures and the damage and destruction wrought upon them. One group stood out at the time—the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage and Preservation (LCCHP). An instant synergy evolved between HARP and LCCHP over issues of plunder and restitution. Our representatives participated in and attended seminars, workshops, and fora organized by LCCHP. This cooperation has since extended to the Antiquities Coalition. 

Since 2013, HARP has forged ties with the Amelia (Italy)-based Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). HARP has been teaching a one-week provenance research workshop during ARCA’s three-month annual certification program focused on Holocaust-era losses and postwar restitution, a novelty in an environment mostly populated by cultural heritage specialists, archaeologists, and art law/art crime professionals.

HARP took interest in the continuing thefts of sacred Hopi artifacts from their communities in Arizona and New Mexico, the smuggling of these objects to France where certain auction houses sold these objects, in some instances, for tidy sums. All this under the nose of US Federal authorities. HARP advocated for the Hopi nation before an administrative court in Paris, not once, but six times, in a vain effort to stop these sales and return the sacred objects to their rightful owners. Although these battles were thankless, they helped make a point that, just because HARP specializes on Jewish cultural losses, it should not ignore the pain of other groups constantly subjected to similar forms of cultural plunder, largely unpunished. For the past ten years, HARP has forged ties with the Amelia (Italy)-based Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA). HARP has been teaching a one-week provenance research workshop during ARCA’s three-month annual certification program focused [use gerund] on Holocaust-era losses and postwar restitution, a novelty in an environment mostly populated by cultural heritage specialists, archaeologists, and art law/art crime professionals.

HARP’s pivoting to a more ecumenical approach towards plunder and restitution has attracted some critics. A major Jewish organization once told HARP to remove the word “Holocaust” from its organizational name –HARP­­­–because of our defense of the Hopi nation. That senseless comment signaled an unhealthy parochialism and reaffirmed our resolve to pursue a path towards a more universal approach towards cultural plunder. HARP defines cultural plunder as a universal crime against humanity and promotes an interfaith, inter-ethnic, inter-cultural, global discussion on how to prevent future acts of cultural plunder and protect all cultures from commercial and ideological predation while prioritizing Jewish cultural losses from the Nazi era.

No other Jewish group seems willing to invest itself in an all-embracing dialogue about plunder and restitution. It reminds me of reports and correspondence written in 1940-1941 by officials of Jewish relief groups in France, pleading for assistance from non-Jewish organizations to help stranded, starving, interned Jews. The answer was always the same: you take care of your own, we take care of ours.

We are now in the Fall of 2023. Why do we continue to live in our separate corners, looking askance at the “others”? What will it take to bring these four categories under one big tent and forge a common strategy whose sole purpose is the restitution, repatriation and return of these objects, regardless of where they were forcibly removed, regardless of who or what instigated these crimes, and regardless of when these crimes occurred?

The lack of solidarity will spell the long-term failure of these restitution and repatriation campaigns to the immense relief and delight of those who currently hold these looted objects and continue to acquire them despite the general outcry of such behavior. It’s a bit like the movie “Catch me if you can!”. Unfortunately, this is not a game. It’s about the destruction of society (and humanity) to the great benefit of the perpetrators and at the expense of you, me and them.

From Outside Neolithic Walls: It’s a Matter of Scale and Resources

Participants attending PRTP-Zagreb from March 10-15, 2013
Source: Holocaust Art Restitution Project

by Martin Terrazas, co-posting with ARCAblog

This is in response to several messages in the past weeks in retrospect of time spent in Amelia:

The multidisciplinary approach undertaken by both the Association for Research into Crimes against Art and Provenance Research Training Program is enriching and valuable. As can be understood in headlines regarding the fight over control of auction houses; the demands of the international art market require broad perspectives, for example, where an art historian is able to discuss accounting, archaeology, criminology, finance, history, and law, to name just a few examples, in passing conversation. The future of sound due diligence and reasonable provenance research depend on these individuals to engage in collaborative dialogues in an organic fashion; to make it second nature to elicit information and ask for assistance when problems arise. Globalized business, proper execution of deliverables, and dignified presentation is no longer optional; partnerships, as can be seen by recent headlines, can destruct in moments.

Taking a page from military vocabulary: VUCA is an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. What has been the largest lesson from both programs is to embrace VUCA. When a “poison pill” comes your way, it is essential not to recourse into territoriality, but rather to accept and learn how to improve operations. Realizing that leadership is not a prize, but rather an obligation to serve, is something that many have forgotten on the way towards comfort: When cultural property has unknown provenance or has been stolen, it hurts not only the responsible parties, but all involved in the market. Provenance research and art crime prevention is a means to an end, whether or not that be restitution and repatriation or seizure and legal sentence by respective authorities. There is no reason for delay regarding important issues such as who has proper title and what occurred at the scene of the crime. Instead of bureaucracy, individuals are owed personal honesty and scientific investigation. Cooperation between parties is essential.

In Amelia, there were discussions regarding the need for a focus in the international art market through financial statements and the fundamentals of business. For example, sometimes artists don't know how to balance a check book. While easy to criticize, even seasoned businessmen and businesswomen in the industry are guilty of this lapse of judgement. This is a lesson that is particular poignant, not only after Mr. Loeb's letter regarding management at Sotheby's, the current controversy at the Detroit Institute of Arts, changes with the Art Loss Register, Art Recovery International, and the Art Compliance Company, but also with news of China Poly's planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. At the end of the day, these are also business. Despite its cost on the balance sheet, protecting the consumer through investigation of provenance, is a priority. It will be more expensive in the long-run selling damaged goods.

Conversations in the past months have made it clear that there is not one definitive individual or source regarding data authority in the art market. There is no one single panacea, roughly phrased, for the ill that is looted cultural property without good provenance: Anyone to state differently ought to be questioned. (The discussion over SB 2212: United States Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act can be included in this reference. UNESCO has been notoriously absent in its opinion of the legislation.) A tide of transparency has been occurring in the art market whether desired or not. Maybe not in a year or a decade; given the current trends starting with past generations, it seems to be increasingly harder to hide and sell devalued illicit cultural property.

There is entrepreneurship and employment to be found in this trend. Inspiration can be seen in the activities of entities worldwide testing the market. Organizations such as the Arbeitsstelle für Provenienzrecherche/-forschung, Archaeology Southwest, ArtCops, ArtTactic, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association, Chasing Aphrodite, the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, the Cultural Policy Center, Elginism, theForschungsstelle "Entartete Kunst", the Getty Research Institute, the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, the International Foundation for Art Research, the International Research Portal for Records Related to Nazi-Era Cultural Property,Illicit Cultural Property, Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Saving Antiquities for Everyone, the Sustainable Preservation Initiative, Trafficking Culture, the United States National Archives Archival Recovery, and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte is but a minuscule list of the building repertoire of initiatives desiring to improve the industry. While change with business cycles will occur; social media statistics show that demand is strong.

To paraphrase Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter’s latest TEDx talk titled “Why business can be good a solving social problems”:

What separates this time from any other brief time on earth is awareness. 

Why are we having so much difficult struggling with these problems?

While clearly Mr. Porter referenced larger ills; the concept remains fundamental. The international art market, like all business, is charged to create shared value. Given the recent headlines, it is important to ask:

Is the international art market properly creating this value? 

If not, how can it be improved? 

What is each of us doing to make it so?

When is restitution a bad thing? The case of Melanesian wood carvings

by Verity Algar, co-posting with ARCAblog

The Holocaust Art Restitution Project and other organisations aiming to restitute Holocaust-looted art to its rightful owners justifiably propose restitution to be a positive thing in this context. However, my research has shown that not all cultural groups want to re-possess their cultural heritage.

I recently spoke at the Association of Research into Crimes Against Art’s 5th Annual Conference, where I compared these two objects:

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt. (1907). Neue Galerie, New York.
Source: Verity Algar

Malanggan, from Northern New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. Collected in 1890. Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Cambridge
Source: Verity Algar

Why would I compare a twentieth-century European painting with a nineteenth-century wood carving from Melanesia, I hear you say?! Well, by comparing these different objects, I wanted to point out that their original owners take vastly different approaches to the restitution of these objects. Let me explain.

In Jewish communities, generally, the original owners of the cultural objects and/or their heirs, feel the need to re-claim their objects in order to gain a sense of closure on a traumatic past. As the following excerpts demonstrate, the language of restitution claims suggest that the Holocaust is not truly over until looted art objects have been restituted:

“The return of stolen art may be one of the last acts of the Shoah”
(Dellheim 2000 cited in Glass 2004: 117) 

“museums … are dealing with the unfinished business of the Holocaust”
(editorial, Seattle Times 16 June 1999) 

“Austria will move closer to closing the book on a somber chapter in 20th-century history”
(Czernin 1998 cited in Glass 2004: 118)

The people of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, on the other hand, do not wish for the malanggan which they themselves created, to be returned to them, despite malanggan being essential to their culture. This may initially seem puzzling because they can often take more than three months to carve (Küchler 2002: 1). Yet they are not made to be displayed, treasured and revered as much of the art confiscated by the Nazis was. Malanggan are displayed for a few hours during mortuary ceremonies, before being left to the elements to decompose (Küchler and Melion 1991: 29). As money became increasingly important in New Ireland, the sale of malanggan to Western collectors became an attractive alternative (Küchler and Melion 1991: 29). More than five thousand malanggan have been collected by Western museums (Küchler and Melion 1991: 27).  As other indigenous groups began to claim the objects that constituted their cultural memory from Western museums, the museums considered restituting the malanggan too.

This illustrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the significance of malanggan to Melanesian culture.  During the carving process, the sculpture is imbued with life force, which is “symbolically killed” when ownership of the malanggan is transferred from the deceased’s family to related kin in exchange for money (Küchler and Melion 1991: 32). The image of the malanggan, however, is preserved as cultural memory and is reproduced in future sculptures (Küchler and Melion 1991: 32). Susanne Küchler and Walter Melion refer to the conflicting status of memory surrounding malanggan practice as “strategic remembering and deliberate forgetting” (1991: 30). To restitute these objects to the people of New Ireland would be to rekindle a specific aspect of their cultural memory, thus interfering with the process of “deliberate forgetting”.

Whilst it is fundamentally important that organisations such as ARCA and HARP continue to support research into Holocaust-era looted art, it is equally important that we understand why restitution can be incredibly problematic for some groups of people. Far from interrupting or countering my pro-restitution tendency, the argument against the restitution of malanggan can run alongside this tendency. As a concept, restitution is neither good nor bad. Rather, decisions about whether or not to restitute cultural objects need to be made on a culture-specific basis.

Verity Algar is a second year BA in History of Art student at University College London, where she minors in Anthropology. She recently spoke on ‘Cultural memory and the restitution of cultural property: Comparing Nazi-looted art and Melanesian malanggan’ at the Association of Research into Crimes Against Art’s 5th Annual Conference. She is hoping to complete the ARCA Postgraduate Certificate before working in a field relating to cultural heritage protection. 

Revisiting Senate Bill 2212—Part One

By Nikki Georgopulos, special to “plundered art”

There has been a great deal of opining and sounding off recently among lawyers, professors, art historians, and art-related organizations as to whether the Foreign Cultural Exchange Judicial Immunity Clarification Act, otherwise known as Senate Bill 2212 (S.2212), should be passed into law. Currently stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the fact that no decision has been made has seemed only to increase the agonizing among those concerned.

The bill, introduced to the 112^th Congress in its second session in March 2012, would amend the judicial code concerning property rights and the protections of objects of “cultural significance” that is imported into the United States for the purposes of “temporary exhibition or display.” The key to understanding this relatively brief bill (it consists of less than 500 words) is to examine the other sections of US law with which it interacts. The most notable instance of this is the Immunity from Judicial Seizure Statute, otherwise known as Section 2459 of Title 22 of the US Code (commonly referred to as 22 USC 2459). Under the jurisdiction of the State Department, 22 USC 2459 “protects from seizure or other judicial process certain objects of cultural significance imported into the United States for temporary display or exhibition.”

The statute acts to guarantee foreign lenders (such as museums, private collections, educational institutions, etc.) that if they loan a cultural object to an institution within the United States, the lender is protected from any other claims of custody. That is to say, the object in question is protected by US law and granted immunity from seizure. The perceived benefit of 22 USC 2459 is that it encourages foreign lenders to send their cultural objects to the United States for exhibition, insofar as they can feel secure in the guarantee that the objects will be safely restored to their custody. This benefits museums and the American public in many obvious ways, and appeals to the “art as ambassador” argument that holds that the exchange of cultural objects supports cross-cultural understanding and cooperation. The problem, as many have pointed out, is that this protects objects that were obtained illicitly, whether by theft, looting, or illegal trade.

The proposed bill would act in accordance with the Immunity from Judicial Seizure Statute, but with one condition that has come to be known as the “Nazi exception.” The bill declares:

‘(2) NAZI-ERA CLAIMS- Paragraph (1) [which reiterates the protections provided under the Immunity from Judicial Seizure Statute] shall not apply in any case in which—

‘(A) the action is based upon a claim that the work was taken in Europe in violation of international law by a covered government during the covered period;

[…]

‘(3) DEFINITIONS- For purposes of this subsection--

‘(A) the term ‘work’ means a work of art or other object of cultural significance; and

‘(B) the term ‘covered government’ means--

‘(i) the Nazi government of Germany;

‘(ii) any government in any area occupied by the military forces of the Nazi government of Germany;

‘(iii) any government established with the assistance or cooperation of the Nazi government; and

‘(iv) any government that was an ally of the Nazi government of Germany; and

‘(C) the term ‘covered period’ means the period beginning on January 30, 1933, and ending on May 8, 1945.’.

To summarize, the so-called Nazi exception allows for suits to be filed that are based upon claims that the work in question was illegally obtained by the Nazi government or any Nazi-affiliated government during what the bill would define as the “Nazi Era” (January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945). In other words, victims of Nazi theft and their heirs ostensibly retain the right to file a claim against a foreign lending institution in order to obtain their object.

Upon first glance, this would seem to not only make sense, but also be beneficial to those victims of the Nazi-era and their heirs who are seeking restitution. As it turns out, this is where things become seriously problematic. Many, such as cultural heritage lawyer Rick St. Hilaire, believe that S.2212 sufficiently protects both claimants and lending institutions, reaffirming the US’s commitment to protecting the cultural objects of foreign lenders. St. Hilaire’s points about the need to reassure foreign lending institutions, thus encouraging further lending, are well taken, and are commonly expressed in the art world today. However, other figures in the cultural heritage protection community are not so sure. According to a post on the website of the organization Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE), the bill “sends an awful message that is in complete opposition to the U.S. commitment to cultural protection and preservation.”

SAFE rightly points out that the bill does not protect antiquities that were illegally excavated and exported from their countries of origin. This might be overlooked if there wasn’t staggering evidence that illicitly obtained antiquities have permeated the licit art trade in large quantities (Part Two of this article will cover this aspect in more detail), such as the recent scandal that overtook the J. Paul Getty Museum.  

Another concern is one that strikes many as ethically questionable, as the bill seems to create a sort of hierarchy of atrocities. In a post by Catherine Sezgin on the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art’s blog, HARP co-founders Marc Masurovsky and Ori Z. Soltes both expressed concern that while the bill seemingly protects against Nazi-era claims, other instances of wartime looting are overlooked. Masurovsky further expressed his frustration in a New York Times piece, asking, “How can you excuse 28 different kinds of plunder and only outlaw one subset of one subset? What is the point here? The only people who have anything to gain are the museum directors. So we’re basically saying it’s fine to plunder?” Indeed, to say that losses sustained during the Second World War are the only ones worth protecting is not only ethically remiss, but also legally problematic.

Setting aside the concerns of many about the exclusive nature of the bill, one is forced to ask, how effective is the bill in protecting Holocaust-era victims and their heirs? The language of the bill allows for many loopholes and exclusions that would prevent those seeking restitution from successfully filing claims. Reading through the bill, the first and perhaps most consequential item of concern comes in section A of Paragraph 2: “[Judicial immunity] shall not apply in any case in which […] the action is based upon a claim that the work was taken in Europe in violation of international law […].” The problem here is that while many of the thefts committed by the Nazis and related bodies have been deemed in violation of international law, there remains a gray about which national governments cannot seem to reach an agreement: that of forced sales.

While the bill covers property confiscations and estate seizures, there remains the question of those objects that were sold under duress by those trying to flee Europe for fear of persecution. The history is clear on this account; many prominent Jewish business people, particularly art collectors, dealers, and gallerists, had to sell off their belongings and collections in order to garner the funds necessary to escape Nazi Germany, France, and other Axis-controlled countries. Additionally, this extends to those who were not involved in the art community. Many German Jews, for example, faced serious economic hardship due to forcible exclusion from participating in the local economy. As a result, they were forced to sell family heirlooms in order to raise money for leaving the country and to provide for themselves and their families.

One possible explanation for why the forced sales question is so difficult to pin down is that it is difficult to provide evidence for what constitutes a sale under duress versus a normal sale. Because of this perceived ambiguity in cases of forced sales, there is no unifying policy that would fall under the category of “international law” to protect the rights of claimants filing for restitution of objects lost to forced sales.

The other major red flag in the bill comes directly after the aforementioned clause: “[Judicial immunity] shall not apply in any case in which […] the action is based upon a claim that the work was taken in Europe in violation of international law by a covered government during the covered period […]” (emphasis added). Paragraph 3 provides the definitions of the covered governments and period:

‘(B) the term ‘covered government’ means--

‘(i) the Nazi government of Germany;

‘(ii) any government in any area occupied by the military forces of the Nazi government of Germany;

‘(iii) any government established with the assistance or cooperation of the Nazi government; and

‘(iv) any government that was an ally of the Nazi government of Germany; and

‘(C) the term ‘covered period’ means the period beginning on January 30, 1933, and ending on May 8, 1945.’.

The bill makes it very clear that it is targeting those affected by the Nazi or otherwise Axis-associated governments. This overlooks a key group of claimants: those whose possessions were taken by Allied military agents. The unfortunate truth is that while the Allies, specifically the US, were responsible for preserving many of the art objects looted by the Nazis and related organizations, so too were they responsible for thefts of their own. Many soldiers took home what they may have considered to be harmless keepsakes. Some scholars posit that Jewish soldiers took Judaica as an act of protest or anger. In any case, a vast number of art objects were poorly protected and were easily targeted. Due to the fact that S.2212 specifies that only those claimants who will be considered are those who were affected specifically by Axis governments, Allied-looted objects remain protected. Additionally, there is evidence that looting by Axis forces continued after May 8, 1945 as German troops were returning home (particularly from Italy). This further weakens the bill’s claim to protecting victims of World War II-era losses.

Though ostensibly well intentioned, S.2212 has obvious weaknesses and carries immense consequences for not only claimants but also the rest of the art community. Part Two of this piece will feature multiple voices who will chime in to help tease out those consequences. It will also examine more closely the antiquities market and how S.2212 will interact with it if passed into law, as well as the potential interaction of the bill with the State Department’s application system for judicial immunity for cultural objects. Among the most troubling of these consequences is the potential for obfuscation of provenance of art objects that are crossing US borders under the aegis of this bill.

In the meantime, if you find yourself in the D.C. area, there is a discussion that is scheduled to take place tomorrow, October 19, 2012, that will cover S.2212 and related legislation featuring Marc Masurovsky. He will give a lecture entitled “Art, Antiquities & War: Is Our Obsession to Possess Art Above the Law.” The lecture and discussion will also be covered in Part Two of the article. For more information and advance ticketing, visit the event page.'

Looted paintings in the State Museum of Smolensk

Картинная галерея, Смоленск
Source: Smolensk Travel

In 2005, a museum in Smolensk, in cooperation with the German Embassy in Moscow, organized an exhibit of German paintings from the 17th century to the early part of the 20th century. Most of the paintings came from the permanent collection of the Smolensk Museum. Of the paintings that were exhibited, more than a dozen came from a single family—Stolberg-Wernigerode—whose estate in Radenz (present-day Borzeciczki), in western Poland near Poznan, had been plundered, first by the Nazis, then by Soviet troops.

The German Embassy in Moscow made contact with the Stolberg-Wernigerode heirs seeking to establish the correct provenance and ownership of the paintings being exhibited in Smolensk. Furthermore, the curatorial staff of the Smolensk Museum even invited the Stolberg-Wernigerode family to come and visit the museum and view the paintings. And so they did.

As they tell the story, the visit took place in November 2005 following a five-hour train ride from Moscow to Smolensk and was nothing short of surrealistic. The following is excerpted from a master’s thesis entitled “Fateful Encounter in Smolensk” submitted on December 10, 2010 by Marie Stolberg as partial fulfillment of a Master’s Degree in International Art Crime Studies sponsored by ARCA—Association for Research into Crimes against Art:

“For our visit they had been taken out of the depot and put up on easels in an extra room. There they were, so many years after they had gone missing, as if nothing had ever happened. Here was the beloved grandmother with the bracelet she gave to her granddaughter who wears it still; the grandfather, great‐grandparents and landscapes of Wernigerode. The paintings had all been restored and they were in excellent condition. It was moment of great emotion. We sat down for an intensive exchange of information with the curators and the director. They were keen to hear about the family and to see the photo album with the paintings hanging on the walls. The curator, Nadeshda Wolossenkowa, said that the crates with the collection from Krotoschinskij
 in Poland had arrived in the summer of 1945. She mentioned, rather incidentally, that a countless amount of further cultural objects (none of which had ever been unpacked, inventoried or even looked at), were still stored in the depots. The conversation was intriguing. At the end of the day we carefully touched on the subject of restitution. I remember Nadeshda’s answer was very polite if not a little vague. She had expected the question and said that one way could possibly be in exchange for cultural objects from Smolensk which had been looted by the Nazis and removed from Russia. She presented us with two catalogues published by the museum and listing works of art missing from their collection. At the same time she stressed that the matter of restitution was not in her hands and only to be decided by the ministry.”

And therein lies the rub. How do claimants recover anything from the former Soviet Union, despite having sufficient proof that the works were rightfully theirs?

Following various official exchanges with the Russian Ministry of Culture, it became apparent that there would not be any consideration of a restitution until the Stolberg-Wernigerode family produced official papers and documentation indicating that the paintings rightfully belonged to them. A difficult task considering the fact that over one hundred years had elapsed since the paintings had entered the family’s estate and a major European conflagration had been responsible for virtually wiping out all traces of historical evidence of individual and collective history, first at the hands of the Germans, then at the hands of the Soviets. Twice plundered.

In some measure, the behavior of the Russian Ministry of Culture closely mirrors that of most governments and cultural institutions faced with such claims—the desire to maintain their current ownership of objects which fell into their hands by circumstances associated with war, plunder, and genocide.

The solution proffered by the curator of the Smolensk Museum—to exchange the works for items plundered by the Germans from their museum by elements of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR)—has become a preferred strategy of the Russian government. Nothing is unilateral. There has to be a quid pro quo, regardless of the validity of the claim submitted by the despoiled party.