MoMA's dalliances with the two portraits of Max Hermann Neisse by Georg Grosz

by Marc Masurovsky

 "Portrait of Max Hermann Neisse", by Georg Grosz, 1925

In April 2009, the heirs of the German expressionist artist, Georg Grosz, filed an art restitution lawsuit against the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, claiming that three paintings by Grosz held in MoMA's collection since the 1950s rightfully belonged to Georg Grosz and his heirs. The outcome of the suit yielded no restitution to the Grosz family despite an offer by MoMA to share the paintings in a co-ownership deal.

A German-born art dealer named Curt Valentin had sold to MoMA one of those paintings, Grosz’s “Portrait of Max Hermann Neisse”, in 1952; this was the second version dated 1927, which Grosz had produced of the celebrated Polish-born German writer, Max Hermann Neisse.

However, as early as 1948, Alfred Barr, the iconic director of MoMA at the time of the 1952 purchase, had had his eyes on the first version that Grosz had painted in 1925 of Max Hermann Neisse. That painting had graced the walls of the Städtische Kunsthalle in Mannheim, Germany, until the Nazi government ordered its de-accession as a “degenerate [entartete]” painting which National Socialist aesthetic principles. After its de-accession, the Mannheim painting of Max Hermann Neisse was eventually sold in the late 1930s to Kurt Sachs, a private collector from Hamburg.Barr wrote about the 1925 Grosz portrait to Theodore Heinrich, then chief of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in Germany, a trained art historian who eventually went on to lead several museums in the United States and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s. Barr had been tipped off of its existence by Charles Parkhurst, another American cultural advisor with US forces in Germany, also referred to as a “monuments man”. Parkhurst had informed Heinrich on February 4, 1948, that Barr would write to him about “a painting for sale formerly in the Kunsthalle, Mannheim.” Apparently, the go-between offering the painting was an “American bookseller” based in Paris, France. This bookseller swore up and down to Barr that the provenance of the Grosz painting was above reproach. [Editor's note: this bookseller might be none other than Heinz Berggruen, who had opened a bookshop on the Left Bank Paris right after its liberation in late August 1944. He had extensive art dealing contacts in Germany and traveled regularly between Paris and the US zone of occupation.].


Barr, on the other hand, indicated to Heinrich that “we would like very much to have this picture in the Collection [of MoMA ] but don’t want to buy anything of which the ownership is not entirely certain.”

Barr to Heinrich, February 9, 1948

Heinrich chose not to reply to Barr in writing but instead met with him in New York on February 27, 1948, at which time he gave him his opinion about this possible acquisition.

 Note by Heinrich about Mannheim Grosz painting

The main concern that Barr had regarding the Mannheim Grosz portrait was that the Mannheim Kunsthalle was aggressively seeking the restitution of the 584 works that it had been forced to de-accession during the Nazi years. Each Western zone of occupation of Germany---French, British, and American—had adopted a different stance regarding the recognition of German museums’ ability to recover their ‘de-accessioned’ properties. According to Heinrich, the Americans had not put forth an official position for or against such claims by German museums, although they ended up ruling in favor of the Nazi de-accession laws, thus striking down with one fell swoop any hope for German museums in their jurisdiction to recover de-accessioned works. However, the French had reacted favorably to Mannheim’s claim for a painting found in private hands in their zone of occupation, thus encouraging the director of the Mannheim Kunsthalle to pursue other claims in the Western Allied zones of occupation of Germany. On the other hand, German art dealers were displeased at the behavior of the German museums whose claims for de-accessioned “degenerate works” were impeding their chance of selling them on behalf of private art collectors like Kurt Sachs who had acquired them after museums had been forced to disgorge them.

In August 1949, Barr offered to buy the painting and resell it to Mannheim "at cost". He sympathized with Mannheim's year-long battle to recover the painting from Sachs and his dealer, Ernst Hauswedell.

Barr to Heinrich, August 19, 1949

Hauswedell argued virulently against Mannheim's claim in a letter to Barr dated September 26, 1949, where he derided the museum’s claim.

Hauswedell to Barr, September 1949

In the end, Mannheim succeeded in reintegrating the Grosz portrait in its permanent collection after having lost it to Nazi cultural policies in 1938. Whether or not this recovery resulted from Barr's intercession is not known.

Three years later, Barr settled on the second version of “Portrait of Max Hermann Neisse” by Georg Grosz, a decision that came back to haunt MoMA 50 years later.

Archival sources: 

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Theodore Heinrich Records, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

O Canada! Where did you go wrong?

by Marc Masurovsky

What is the problem up there?

Way back when, at the turn of the twenty-first century, an international conference was held in Ottawa hosted by the National Gallery of Canada, where members of the art trade, civil servants, researchers, claimants, survivors, art historians, lawyers, and hangers-on from various nations met to discuss looted art and restitution as a global problem but more particularly as a Canadian problem.

After three intense days of deliberations and animated discussions, the participants to this conclave came up with a blueprint with could have led to meaningful reforms in Canada that might have raised the ethical bar, thus ensuring that museums, dealers, collectors—the private and public sectors—did the right thing, cleaned up their collections, stopped buying looted artifacts and stolen art, and educated their public and their personnel about the ethics of collecting and the evils of cultural plunder. In some respect, the Ottawa Conference had accomplished a small miracle, one that was out of reach of the Washington Holocaust Assets Conference of December 1998.

Lost opportunities. Had this blueprint been enacted, even in part, it would have placed Canada at the forefront of the art restitution movement, a title that Austria is fighting hard to gain, since it is the only country in the world with a basic and generically effective restitution law.

Twelve years later, nothing has happened of any significance in Canada, save for interesting declarations, expressions of good will, attempts at increased provenance research in various museums (three at last count) and an inability, more to the point, an unwillingness to return stolen cultural property to their rightful owners. All this inaction despite the presence of highly educated and aware specialists, art lawyers specialized in restitutions, at least in name only, as well as thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors whose property was stolen but who somehow do not weigh in to these debates. Well-intentioned people everywhere, but no one to step up to the plate and tip the scales in favor of JUSTICE. Even the Canadian Jewish Congress has vanished from the very debates that it used to stoke with glee in the late 1990s. Times have changed, indeed.

Why the sour face?

Montreal is a poster child for everything that is wrong and that is right about Canada. Forget Toronto because no one is paying attention there.

Who gets it right? Why, the Max Stern Foundation at Concordia University. This foundation, established after the death of a German Jewish art dealer from Düsseldorf who was forced to leave the Third Reich for the obvious reasons after having been forced to sell his collection of several hundred Old Master paintings.

Max Stern's gallery in Dusseldorf, Germany
Source: Concordia University

Forced sale drove Max Stern into the ground and Nazi anti-Jewish policies drove him into exile to Canada where he became a successful businessman and bequeathed his estate to Concordia University, with the caveat that it would have to establish a project whose main goal would be to recover his lost works of art. Brilliant! The only project of its kind in the entire world… No kidding.

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal
Source: Wikipedia

Who gets it wrong? The Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal, a wonderful, albeit eclectic, compilation of brilliant Old Master paintings abutting fairly tacky and should I say “pompier” art from the 19th and early 20th century.  Now is not the time to be snobbish about the quality of the art. Suffice it to say that, from the 1950s on, this charming museum benefited from the largesse of a handful of very wealthy donors who parted with their classical acquisitions, coupled with new acquisitions over the past several decades aiming to place the Musée des Beaux-Arts as close as possible to the pantheon of great museums in North America, if not in Canada. Mission accomplished? You be the judge. Meanwhile, in their great haste to acquire, the museum staff and board members forgot to do their due diligence and, in the process, absorbed a small trove of paintings of dubious origin. The most glaring examples are:

The Deification of Aeneas (1642-1644) by Charles Le Brun
Source: Wikipedia

The Deification of Aeneas (1642-1644), by Charles Le Brun, which once belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, a wealthy Dutch art merchant who perished accidentally on a boat in the North Sea shortly before the Nazi takeover of Holland in spring of 1940. The rest being history, several thousand pieces in his extraordinary collection were dispersed under the watchful eyes of Marshal Goering and his minions. Goudstikker’s heirs have spent decades seeking the return of these stolen works. Successes and failures have followed in quick succession, but the behavior of the Musée des beaux-arts of Montréal ranks as low as that of the Norton Simon Museum in California over its stubborn reticence to relinquish paintings that belong to the Goudstikker family, even if all of the evidence in hand is clear and incontrovertible.

“Das Duett” by Gerhard Honthorst, which used to be the property of a German Jew named Bruno Spiro before being sold under less than honorable circumstances in 1934. How it ended up at the Musée des Beaux-Arts remains unclear.

"Das Duett" by Gerhard Honthorst
Source: Lost Art

As with many cultural institutions, the Montreal museum’s leadership has been sitting pat on its hands, waiting for things to not happen. That is one strategy that characterizes most museums’ responses to restitution claims, the strategy of attrition. Tire them out, stall for time, until someone passes away, namely the claimant, or the plaintiff’s treasury runs dry, or a combination thereof.

It’s even more unfortunate to have to witness this callous state of affairs when one realizes that the chairperson of the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Montreal is one of the most successful Holocaust survivors in Canada. Yes, you heard it here. This is not esoteric or a mystery, no one is hiding under a rock here. Mr. Hornstein is a distinguished member of the Canadian Jewish community, a highly decorated member of Canadian society, someone to look up to and admire, especially after everything that he went through, least of which was to be deported to Auschwitz. And yet, with the moral sway and the burden of history that Mr. Hornstein carries on his frail shoulders, although he sounds like one tough guy, a man known for his boundless generosity, why does he not awaken from his dream and persuade the Museum’s board to relinquish those few paintings that are at issue to their rightful owners, thus transforming him into an even greater mensch than he already is? Why? Does anyone know? Maybe it’s because at least one painting in the collection was claimed by the Polish government. Who knows?

It’s always been a puzzle as to why it would have to come to this, time and time again, where Jewish claimants, some rich, most not, would have to butt heads against formidable members of the Jewish community, current possessors of their property, and bloody their heads against brick walls of indifference, verging on disdain and contempt. Yes, strong words these are, but truthful words, words spoken from decades of hapless and helpless observation. How many times have Jewish claimants come up against other members of the community in futile attempts to knock sense into them and invoke age-old communal ties to do the right thing much like the Torah commands them to do? Nothing doing. For some inexplicable reason, the principle of having acquired a stolen work of art in good faith primes over any moral, ethical, communal, communitarian, spiritual, religious, or plain commonsensical reason. It simply ain’t gonna happen.

So, what is to be done?

All-out war? Is that what where we are headed? Intra-communitarian warfare? Silly discourses about working hard and having suffered greatly and why should I simply hand this painting back to you? How do I know it’s yours anyway? And so forth and so on? So much unnecessary strife, so much grandstanding, why? As usual, it’s the principle that matters, on both sides of the fence. The current possessors reason like 2nd Amendment nut cakes who prize their guns over human life, while claimants invoke rightfully the wrongs of history, the certainty that injustice has been committed, brandish the incontrovertible proof that backs their claim, invoke and implore, and plead, in vain. Maybe the Mounties can resolve this, much like agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do in the United States whose track record is practically unblemished. After all, it’s hard to challenge a badge and a gun, because there’s not much left to say. A crime is a crime. But if the hapless claimant comes unarmed, the current possessor eats him alive, arguing that there is no crime. Long live Kafka!

It is somewhat a fitting irony to have two antithetical institutions and modes of behavior co-existing within half a mile of one another in Montreal—the Max Stern Art Restitution Project on the one hand and the Musée des Beaux-Arts on the other. They embody the optimism that one can feel whereby it is possible to recover and to do right, while the other exudes cynicism and reinforces our endless pessimism that museum boards and their supporters live on another planet in some kind of art-fueled apartheid.

As yet another pessimistic sign of things to come, there is an event coming up at McGill University, also in Montreal, which appears to be underwritten by one of the top law firms in Canada. The event hosts none other than Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to discuss the intersection of art and law when it comes to questions of restitution of looted art. Well, now, who else but Glenn Lowry to discuss in the most objective and impartial manner how his institution has refused steadfastly ever since the end of the Second World War to return anything to anyone.

Glenn Lowry
Source: The Lattice Group

Quite the contrary, MOMA is always happy to preserve, safeguard, store, display, acquire, and otherwise hoard works of art that do not necessarily belong to this fine cultural institution. Perhaps, these words are on the cusp of libel. Perhaps they are, but go ask the Georg Grosz heirs, go ask the heirs of the Redslob family, go ask anyone about Alfred Barr’s disingenuous and clever ways of acquiring looted art on the European market and then on the American market, hiding behind sycophantic dealers and collectors only too happy to minister to Barr’s wishes, in the hopes that he would …. what? Curry favors to them? The art world being what it is, anything is possible, of course. But Alfred Barr was no dummy, no he wasn’t. When looted art, art looted by the Nazi government from its own citizens and institutions was put up for sale in Lucerne, Switzerland, in late June 1939, Barr didn’t dare embarrass himself by bidding in person for those works. No, he hired “cut-outs” who acted on his behalf and turned the acquired works over to MOMA without dropping a hint that the purchases had been commissioned by good ol’ Alfred.

Alfred H. Barr
Source: Wikipedia

Back to Canada... Suffice it to say that for McGill to host a presentation on a subject as complex and contentious as restitution of looted art by asking the proverbial elegant fox to lead the discussion, the fox being Mr. Lowry of course, is already a very bad sign, an indication that there is no interest on the part of this fine academic institution to provide a forum where the complexities of plunder and its consequences for institutions such as MOMA can be brought to bear for the benefit of the audience. Or one senses callous indifference on the part of the organizers of this event as they prefer to display their talent at bringing in one of the most successful American museum directors on their campus to discuss a topic where he unfortunately behaves more like a perpetrator than a Solomon, thereby cheating its public of an unique opportunity to apprehend the role of cultural institutions as enablers of historic injustices by refusing to return objects that clearly do not belong to them.

The fight continues…

Come on, Canada! Wake up! Smell the coffee! Do something useful and honorable! Restitute!

How to profit from State-sanctioned plunder: the Entartete Kunst case

The Nazi government enacted on May 31, 1938, the ”Act on Confiscations of Degenerate Art“ (“Gesetz über Einziehung von Erzeugnissen entarteter Kunst“) in order to legitimize its domestic purge of all works of art not deemed suitable in the New National Socialist Aryan Germany. By 1942, according to an inventory compiled by the Reich Ministry for Cultural Enlightenment and Religion (Joseph Goebbels' purview) at least 16,000 so-called “degenerate”works of art were accounted for in museums and cultural institutions controlled by the Nazi government.

The Nazi government selected a handful of art dealers—Ferdinand Möller, Bernhard Böhmer, Karl Buchholz and Hildebrand Gurlitt—to do their bidding and get rid of these works on the art market—read, the international art market—in order to raise cash and cleanse the German cultural landscape once and for all.

Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
Source: Wikipedia

Institutions like the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid have touted these gentlemen as “saviors” of Germany’s modernist art treasures, probably because the Museum owns a number of German Expressionist works that were "saved" by Gurlitt and Buchholz. Interesting. A rare instance where thieves and their acolytes are treated as heroes. Obviously, there’s room for everyone in the pantheon of Aat.

As one can readily imagine, the Nazi-ordered global recycling of "degenerate" art was the biggest cultural fire sale orchestrated by any standing government, legitimate or other, for which there could only be one word—opportunity! And, indeed, opportunity struck high throughout the ensuing decades, even after the fall of the Third Reich in early May 1945.

Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
Source: The Art Story

Fast forward to 1964—an unusual year in the international auction market because a large number of these ‘degenerate’ works are put up for sale and snatched up by private collectors and museums, including American institutions. This is not to say that American museums did not seize earlier opportunities to absorb at prices not even fit for a flea market, priceless works of art by 19th and 20th century masters. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) under the enlightened leadership of Alfred Barr cashed in on various spectacular sales of ‘degenerate’ works such as the 1939 Lucerne, Switzerland, sale at Theodore Fischer’s gallery, and many subsequent transactions through third parties which allowed Barr to absorb an untold number of those works into the collections of MOMA.

In 1964, two works by Wassily Kandinsky come up for sale at Sotheby’s London—“Zweierlei Rot” which Dr. Gurlitt had ‘acquired’ for not even 100 dollars and “Ruhe” which was handled by Moeller. Both works hailed from the Berlin Nationalgalerie. “Zweierlei Rot” ended up in a private collection, giving the previous owner a handsome profit, while “Ruhe” was picked up by the Guggenheim Foundation together with dozens of other works by Kandinsky, an event that earned a small outcry in the German-language press.

While the Allied powers had denounced all transactions and laws entered into and decreed by the Nazi government between 1933 and 1945 to be null and void, thus illegal, the Allied Control Council (ACC) which ruled over the zones of occupation in Germany decreed by 1948 that the purging of German State cultural institutions had constitued a legitimate State-sanctioned act. One has to scratch one’s head in wonder at this ruling, justified by the Council by the fact that the Nazi government had not engaged in an overt act of discriminatory policy. Or could it be that, in order to avoid a wholesale purge and overhaul of the art market, it was best to let bygones be bygones? After all, if the ACC had declared the Nazi war against “degenerate” art to be illegal and consistent with its racial, anti-Semitic, xenophobic ideology, the acquisition of more than 16,000 works of art by institutions and individuals worldwide would have been subject to a massive “recall” and German state institutions placed in the awkward position of having to reclaim what they had cleansed, willingly or unwillingly.

The winners? 

According to museums and art world denizens, the general public is the winner. In the view of those who strive for ethical behavior in the global art market, there can be only one winner―the art market.

Henri Matisse in Vichy France

by Marc Masurovsky

As in the case of Pablo Picasso and many other eminent artists plying their creative streak in France, Henri Matisse chose to remain rather than leave his native country in the face of the German onslaught of spring 1940 against Western Europe.

Let's engage in a perfunctory review of Matisse's journey in wartime France:

October 1939: Matisse goes to Paris after a stay near Rambouillet. While in Paris, he places for safekeeping all of his works of art and those of other artists which he owns, in a vault at the Banque de France. His son, Pierre, has already left for the United States, while his other son, Jacques, is in the French Army. His grandson, Claude, is in a boarding school near Vichy. His daughter, Marguerite, is with his wife in the town of Beauzelle. Apparently, Mr. and Mrs. Matisse have not been living together since March 1939.

Mid-October 1939: Henri Matisse heads back to Nice where he has an apartment at the Hotel Regina from which he works. While Henri goes to Nice, his wife and daughter return to Paris to an apartment on rue de Miromesnil.

November 1939: Henri Matisse renews a contract with the dealer, Paul Rosenberg, who is one of his most regular buyers.

January 1940: Pierre Matisse, now settled in New York, announces to a variety of family friends that his parents are splitting up.

May 1940: While the German armies are running roughshod over French troops in eastern France and heading towards Paris, Henri Matisse returns to the beleaguered capital, dodging refugee traffic, in order to finalize his legal separation from his wife.

June 1940: Matisse and everyone else who can manage it hightails it out of Paris and heads south-southwest. He ends up in late June 1940 at Ciboure near Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the Basque country. He remains in that part of the world, not too far from where German troops are stationed, but far enough, until he finds a train to take him back to Nice in August.

August 1940: Matisse reaches Carcassonne then Marseilles. In Marseilles, he draws a series of portraits of his grandson, Claude Duthuit. On August 29, Matisse finally makes it back to the Hotel Regina in Nice, shortly after Picasso returns to his studio in Paris on the rue des Grands Augustins.

Fall 1940: Varian Fry, of the Emergency Rescue Committee, funded in part by Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, tries in vain to convince Matisse to escape to the United States. Matisse refuses. Matisse is Fry's idol.

Winter 1940-1941: Matisse is plagued by intestinal problems and has difficulty working.

January 1941: A cancerous growth is removed from Matisse's abdomen.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, while he is holed up in Nice, dozens of his paintings and works on paper are being forcibly removed from Jewish collections and brought to the Jeu de Paume or recycled on the local art market. His works fetch upwards of 300,000 Francs in Paris auctions which is a significant amount for those rationed days.

August 1941: Matisse is among many "French" artists who exhibit their works on paper at the "Salon du Dessin" in Paris, one of the first major artistic events in the German-occupied capital that excludes Jews from its walls. That same month, Matisse allows Varian Fry to take a series of photographic portraits of him at the Hotel Regina in Nice. How surreal!

November 1941: Matisse has an exhibit at the Galerie Louis Carré in Paris.

January-February 1942: Matisse grants several interviews to the Vichy government's official radio station.

Matisse spends the rest of the year in Nice, convalescing from additional gastro-intestinal troubles but continuing to work as best as he can for one of his dealers, Martin Fabiani, who makes a fortune collaborating with the Germans during the war. Ironically, Fabiani sells on the side stolen paintings by leading artists such as .... Henri Matisse, which the Germans have exchanged with him against more classical works.

January 1943: Vichy's leading cultural rag, Comoedia, publishes an interview with Henri Matisse, predicated on his creation of 50 drawings illustrating Pierre Ronsard's poems. The article by Marguerite Bouvier is an ode to Matisse, who is now 72 years old.

June 1943: Finally, Matisse is forced to flee Nice and seeks refuge in Vence, due to a constant threat of aerial bombardments.

September-October 1943: Matisse and Braque are prominently displayed at the Salon de l'Automne, an annual fixture of the French (read Paris) art scene. Strangely, while their works are shown to everyone's delight including that of the German occupier, the ERR is busy figuring what to do with Matisse and Braque works under their jurisdiction not too far away at the Jeu de Paume.

Spring 1944: the estranged Mrs. Matisse and her daughter are arrested for engaging in acts of resistance against the Vichy government and the German occupation. Mrs. Matisse gets six months of prison while her daughter is jailed until the Liberation.