First anniversary of "plundered art"

Happy holidays!

The “plundered art” blog just passed its first anniversary.

This might be a good time to revisit its reason for existence.

It’s not that simple to decide one day: “Oh! Let’s write about the restitution of art objects looted by those Nazis and Fascists during the 1930s and 1940s and how so much of it was never returned to the rightful owners and why the current owners of those objects look for every way under the sun not to return those objects and why governments pretend that there is no problem.”

This blog is certainly not about settling scores, old and new.

It’s actually a complicated beast.

At first, I was very shy about putting anything in writing about an issue that has already absorbed several decades of my life. Truth be told, the initial motivation for this blog was to share the story of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP), how it came into existence and what it was able to accomplish.

The telling of HARP’s story has not been a simple affair and is still incomplete.

It runs afoul of important and enduring taboos:

• the unwillingness of postwar Jewish organizations in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, to press for a complete accounting of the cultural losses suffered by Jewish owners during the 1930s and 1940s;
• the unwillingness of State-controlled cultural institutions across the globe to produce a complete inventory of cultural assets that entered their collections since the 1930s which might have been acquired illegally;
• the unwillingness of governments to come clean about the extent, scope, and breadth of cultural plunder in their respective nations and their efforts to produce complete inventories of those looted cultural assets in State-owned collections;
• the unwillingness of governments to come clean about the total number of looted cultural assets present in State-owned collections;
• the unwillingness of national and international groups to address the question of cultural rights, the sovereign right of individuals to culture and to the ownership of cultural assets over those of States, the question of cultural patrimony, cultural property, and cultural heritage, and how those abstract notions interfere with and are used against the right of individuals to recover and own looted cultural assets which are rightfully theirs. Those non-governmental organizations include but are not limited to: the United Nations, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and many other organizations and agencies, supranational and national which are specifically concerned with cultural rights, and the protection of cultural assets;
• the unwillingness of law enforcement, police and security agencies—civilian and military—to repress and suppress the illicit international trade in looted cultural assets, including and especially the millions of objects that changed hands illegally against the backdrop of genocide, mass conflict and slaughter in the 1930s and 1940s and beyond;
• the unwillingness of cultural institutions, universities, colleges, institutes, foundations, and other cultural establishments to teach and educate young and old about the phenomenon of cultural plunder, the cultural rights of individuals, and ask the fundamental question as to who owns culture when discussing the illicit removal of art objects from the hands of their rightful owners and the attempts of the latter—mostly vain—to recover them as their own.

As of now, the following items remain unanswered, more than sixty-five years after plunder was denounced at the International Military Tribunal at Nurnberg as a crime against humanity and a war crime:

• the true extent, scope, and breadth of thefts of cultural assets during the 1930s and 1940s for racial, political, and other reasons;
• the actual number of lost cultural assets, by type, by owner, by country;
• the actual number of cultural assets recovered;
• the actual number of cultural assets restituted to their rightful owners;
• the actual number of cultural assets that were recovered but never restituted;
• the actual number of cultural assets that were looted and never restituted—by type, by owner, by country.
• the identity of the thieves;
• the identity of those who agreed to trade in these looted cultural assets;
• the identity of those who currently own these looted cultural assets.

To make a long story short, for now, the telling of HARP’s story ran afoul of these unanswered questions and the overwhelming taboo that endures today as strongly as it did two decades ago of venerable institutions that seek to educate the world about the Holocaust and genocide and yet refuse out of principle—yes, OUT OF PRINCIPLE!—to avoid at all costs any discussion, any debate, any addressing in any way, shape or form, of the question of cultural plunder, despite the fact that millions of members of the Jewish community suffered unspeakable losses, physical, material, and spiritual—among them, the loss of objects that tied them to culture—their own and that of others.

Let’s be clear about one thing: it is far easier to ignore the problem than to address it. And for those who seek to address it absent any filters, any caveats, any disclaimers, any compromises, the road is long, steep, and lonely. But every time progress is made, however small, even the mere existence of this blog, justifies the desire to induce even the slightest change in society’s approach to the question of cultural rights, cultural ownership, and cultural restitution.

The second year of the “plundered art” blog opens on a renewed commitment to speak, document, critique, applaud, proclaim, advocate and document, document, and document more. Because transparency is the only way by which we can grasp the full breadth and scope of the problem, a problem made so complicated by those who oppose restitution. Those who refuse to address it are simply acting as accomplices, aiding and abetting in the crime of rewriting history by denying its existence.

I wish to thank you, our readers, listeners, observers, and critics alike, for checking into “plundered art.” I invite you to continue.

Year two promises to explore cultural plunder in other realms, like the Far East, the universality of cultural rights and its nemesis, cultural plunder; and the search for enduring, long-term solutions to remedy the ills of cultural thefts anchored in mass conflict, genocide, ethnocide, and other forms of wholesale persecutions perpetrated by a State or a group against individuals because of who they are and what they are.

Works and objects will be discussed with dubious ownership histories which are displayed, bought, and sold, across the globe.

And, of course, there is no shortage of historical information on plundered objects that have either been restituted or remain out of reach of their rightful owners.

Until next time…

From Al-Andalus to the Jeu de Paume: A Lesson in Provenance, Valencia Style

by Martin Terrazas

After initial dramatic seizures of major Jewish collections in the Paris region during the summer and fall of 1940 by the foot soldiers of the German Embassy in Paris (the Geheime Feld Polizei—literally, Secret Field Police—or GFP), the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) seized control of the Nazi-ordered plunder of Jewish-owned art in occupied France, as well as in all territories overrun by German troops. In Paris, the ERR art historians and experts came upon thousands of decorative objects owned by the likes of Jean A. Seligmann and his brothers André and Arnold; Edouard, James-Armand, Alexandrine, Guy, Henri, and Philippe de Rothschild; the Bacri brothers, Georges Wildenstein, and Paul Rosenberg. Among those objects which their units had confiscated and transferred first to the Louvre and from there to the Jeu de Paume, were priceless decorative art objects and in particular ceramics from Valencia, Spain.

What seems like simple, blue-and-white ceramics holds a plethora of plot lines. These decorative objects have a unique history, warping cultures and time together, perhaps in many ways that, come World War II, their Jewish owners and Fascist looters had not previously known.

While many scholars trace the craft back to the Abbasids in Sāmarrā’, under the reign of Jaume II of Aragon, the tradition was brought from Al-Andalus, in particular its capitals of Córdoba and Granada and manufacturing centers of Triana and Úbeda, to the banks of the Turia (Guadalaviar). Under its Catholic adoptees, this hand-crafted pottery gained worldwide fame, helped Valencia’s port become a principal Mediterranean shipping call, and created a Spanish ceramic industry that despite various governments, bloody civil war, dictatorship, outsourcing, economic depression, and indifference by younger generations, is still maintained today in places such as Manises, Paterna, L’Alcora, Muel, Villafeliche, Talavera de la Reina, Puente de Arzobispo, Barcelona and Reus.

From the Rothschild Collection, Paris, France:

Spanish-Moorish vase, 16th c.
Source:ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

Spanish-Moorish Plate, ca. 1429
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

Spanish-Moorish majolica plate, 16th c.
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv

Spanish-Moorish plate, early 17th c.
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv