Monika Gruetters’ “Jewish problem”

by Marc Masurovsky

On March 3, 2016, the New York Times published an article signed by correspondent Alison Smale which confirmed that the Gurlitt Task Force’s work had been transferred to the “Center for Lost Art” in Magdeburg, Germany, as part of a general overhaul of the German government’s agencies specialized in issues pertaining to looted art. Thanks to Minister Gruetters, this Center has received a badly-needed injection of funds which doubled its previous budget to reach six million euros, renewing her commitment to ensure that research would continue into the provenance of the Gurlitt collection's 1400 objects.

Monika Gruetters

Culture Minister Gruetters has been sharply taken to task by domestic and international critics for the slowness of the research into the possibility that works tainted by anti-Jewish persecution and theft during the Nazi years might be part of the now-infamous Gurlitt collection, “discovered” in 2012 and made public in the fall of 2013. As of now, five paintings are known to have been linked to a victim of Nazi plunder. There are more than 1400 works in the Gurlitt hoard.

Our problem today has to do with a comment that Minister Gruetters made in response to suggestions by Germany’s Jewish community that a member of that community be appointed to the so-called Limbach commission which hears claims for restitution of looted art present in German cultural institutions. The commission’s recommendations are non-binding and, so far, have been mostly hostile to claimants who, in almost every instance, live outside of Germany and are of Jewish descent.

Hence, the Limbach Commission’s objectivity and interest in furthering justice 70 years after the demise of the Third Reich, have been repeatedly called into question. This state of affairs has not prevented Minister Gruetters from pointing out that the presence of a “Jewish figure” at the Limbach Commission would be ill-advised because “that person would be the only voice who would be prejudiced.”

The seating of a member of the Jewish community of Germany on the Limbach Commission would be viewed as injecting bias into the commission’s proceedings. Ms. Gruetters’ comment is provocative for a number of reasons:

Jutta Limbach

1/ a Jewish member of the commission would automatically be prejudiced. In what direction, pray tell? For or against the claimant? As if the quality of being Jewish signified a taint on one’s capacity to be objective and impartial.

2/ the minister’s comment subsumes that Jews favor restitution and have never been known to oppose restitution.

3/ no one has questioned the prejudice or bias of the non-Jewish members of the Limbach Commission. Does the fact that the Limbach commission’s non-Jewish makeup ensure objectivity and impartiality in the proceedings to assess the merit of a claim put forth by a Jewish claimant, whose family once resided in Germany? If anything, ten years of proceedings at the Limbach Commission could make us wonder if, in fact, the commission’s good judgment is tainted, principally, because there is no “outside” voice amongst its members. In short, it behaves as an echo chamber of individuals reluctant to acknowledge the vicissitudes of history when it comes to cultural plunder on its territory, once ruled by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP).

In passing, the presence (albeit in a minority) of members of the Jewish faith on the Gurlitt Task Force did not appear to have a negative impact on the work of that commission. If anything, those minority voices acted as foils to the “objective” wisdom dispensed by its “non-Jewish” members.

Ms. Gruetters’ tasteless comment reflects a longstanding problem inherent to postwar discussions about the Holocaust, reparations, restitution, and justice. The Jewish voice is still viewed as a voice containing implicit bias in its essence, which denies that voice the capacity to infuse critical thinking in its assessment of the consequences of genocide on individual members of the Jewish community and on the merit of claims for reparations and/or restitution.

Ms. Gruetters should understand that Jews do not speak in one single, unified, public voice on matters pertaining to restitution and reparations. In fact, that discussion is rife with dissenting opinions as one is likely to find among leaders and senior officials of Jewish organizations and Holocaust memorials voices that are indifferent or in fact hostile to restitution, especially in the cultural field. There are notable exceptions, as with the Commission for Art Recovery and the Claims Conference.

It would behoove Ms. Gruetters and other German officials, now and henceforth, to view Jewish individuals as critical thinkers rather than puppets who could not reason because of their appurtenance to their faith. If anything, debate is healthy especially among bureaucrats. It helps shake off the dust and inject fresh blood and new thoughts into an otherwise stilted conversation weighed down by the burdens of law and history, but apparently not sufficiently stirred with sprinkles of ethics and morality.

Provenance research: what to do?

by Marc Masurovsky

The fault lines around contrasting views and understandings of provenance research resurfaced during the international conference on looted art that took place on February 20 and 21, 2015, at Columbia University entitled “Ghosts of the Past: Nazi looted art and its legacies”.

The fissures are brought about as a result of the legal implications of provenance research.

In my view, a provenance is a document that outlines the history of ownership or possession of an object from the time of its creation to the present. The older the object, the more likely it will be difficult to account for every movement and place where the object was situated once it left the studio of its maker. But as you all well know, even so-called modern works can have elusive provenances such as “private collection, Zurich”.

The contrast in approach, in my view, stems from the fact that one school, mostly articulated by museum professionals, which we will refer to as “traditional” is not necessarily interested in injecting economic, political and social history into the documentation of the fate of an object, especially as it pertains to the 1933-1945 period. For some strange reason, that entire period remains a taboo subject, difficult to express even in the literature that museums and galleries develop around the objects that they display. This same school also argues that one will never know exactly what happened to an object, maintaining that there is no concrete evidence that something “bad” happened to the owner of the object and, even it did, it might not have affected the legal title to that object. After all, the object might have been sold “legally” and we just don’t know about it. Hence we can never ascertain that the object was in fact misappropriated for racial or political reasons, and therefore should not be restituted to its purportedly rightful owner. This view remains the favorite weapon of individuals who work for those who are best described as the “current possessors” of the object being claimed, namely cultural institutions—public and private.

The other school to which this writer belongs argues that context plays a very important role in determining the fate of an object. One might call it the “organic” school, for lack of a better word. It argues that the object, the place where it is and the person in whose possession it is, represent the three cardinal points around which the history of the object is articulated against the matrix of history which evolves over time and space. Put simply, an object that changes hands in Munich, Germany, and which belonged to a person of the Jewish faith may be moving around for reasons compelled by the change of regime in Germany on January 30, 1933, thus signaling a potentially violent and illegal transfer of ownership after Hitler’s rise to power.

A research training program takes on vastly different features if it follows the “organic” school or the “traditional” school that warrants that the actual fate of an object will never be exactly known, raising the possibility that there could be a document out there that could prove that nothing untoward occurred and the object changed hands legally even in the context of racial and political persecution and genocide.

You would be surprised, but this “traditional” school of thought has led to negative outcomes for claimants more often than not, most notably in the Grosz v. MoMA case and in the case opposing the heirs of Martha Nathan to the Toledo Art Museum and the Detroit Institute of Art. 

When we think about establishing provenance research training programs in colleges and universities, we realize that some schools might adopt one or the other approach. A balanced program would offer both approaches to future practitioners, advising them of the pitfalls and benefits inherent to either approach.

Some participants and speakers at the Columbia Conference (see above) were very adamant about promoting their own views of how provenance research should be conducted, whether “traditional” or “organic” which is a good thing because it gave those in attendance an opportunity to weigh both in their own minds.

Any museum-guided provenance research training program will likely promote the “traditional” view that provenance research is first and foremost about documenting the itinerary of an object from creation to the present day, with history being relegated to a back seat.

Any provenance research training program guided by the notion that it is essential for the provenance to document who the actual owner of the object is promotes the “organic” view and will assign greater weight to history and the environment in which the object evolved, beyond the narrow confines of conventional art history.

These contrasting views have become an integral part of the landscape of provenance research, influenced and skewed by decades of litigation and legal wrangling between current possessors—in most cases, museums and galleries—and claimants.

The geography of “traditional” vs. “organic”

Where do we find “traditional” views as opposed to “organic” views of provenance research?

The “traditional” approach is mostly upheld in the hallowed halls of cultural institutions of a certain size located in large metropolitan centers. It can also be found among those who teach in museum studies programs and art history programs. One can even argue that the “traditional” view suffuses the curriculum of these academic programs that train future curators, art historians and other cultural professionals.

The “organic” view, strangely enough, finds its strongest advocates among archaeologists and cultural heritage specialists who take seriously the matrix from which objects are extracted. They are joined by those who research the fate and history of objects lost by claimants and their families. Some government officials, mostly in Europe, have eased their way into an “organic” view of provenance research, especially in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

The future of provenance research

There is no game plan right now. The most important next step is to institute formalized academic offerings in colleges and universities that introduce students to both methodologies—“traditional” and “organic”—as well as in specialized workshops organized by non-profit organizations.

The European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) offered a Provenance Research Training Program (PRTP) from 2012 to 2015 through a series of five workshops staged in five different cities—Magdeburg, Germany; Zagreb, Croatia; Vilnius, Lithuania; Athens, Greece; and Rome, Italy. Both approaches were offered to participants although most workshops tended to lean towards an “organic” view of provenance.

By contrast, the Washington-based American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) have offered half-day and day-long seminars characterized as workshops in which they introduced curators, librarians, archivists and art historians to the mechanics of working with objects and documenting their history. These programs fit into the “traditional” mold and will likely continue. Likewise, the Smithsonian Museums appear to be thinking about developing some kind of “traditional” provenance research training program of their own.

Proposals abound about how to produce a more structured approach to training. Some efforts are taking shape in France. Provenance research is now being introduced to universities in select cities.  The Free University of Berlin continues to offer a curriculum on “degenerate art” which tends to steer away from controversy and thus finds comfort in a more “traditional” approach to provenance research. This is perhaps due to the fact that funding comes from the government. On the other hand, in Munich, the Zentral Institut für Kunstgeschichte (Central Institute for Art History) promotes through its research projects a more “organic” vision of provenance research that gives extra weight to the mechanics of the Third Reich, the relationships of power and interest between various groups in the art world, into the understanding of an object’s pathway through the 1933-1945 period. These relationships and “interests” , it is argued, shape the fate of the object.

There is talk about asking the European Union to establish a Europe-wide entity with EU funds that would coordinate research into the history of objects under review for possible taint of looting or misappropriation. The idea makes eminent sense since national governments have skirted the issue rather successfully for the past 70 years. It might just require such a supranational effort to compel provenance research and training of practitioners. For such an effort to even get off the ground, entities and individuals with an “interest” in these matters of restitution, looted art, provenance research, will have to work together, coalesce their strengths and assets in order to lobby successfully for the creation of a funded unit at the EU level.

And still others argue that the only way to provide training is through some sort of international association of provenance researchers. According to this position, this association (which does not yet exist) will be responsible for coordinating at the national and international level all activities pertaining to provenance research and training. For this to happen, national chapters have to be established and more importantly, a clear definition of provenance research has to be adopted. If we follow this duality of “traditional” vs. “organic”, will the association try and reconcile these two approaches or will it favor one over the other? Who will make that determination? Without a clear understanding of what provenance research is, how can such an association see the light of day?

Maybe several associations are required if the two approaches cannot be reconciled. That might not be the worst thing to do. The only organization of provenance researchers that exist today is in Germany, the Arbeitsstelle für provenienzforschung (AfP) and includes mostly German researchers who are for the most part working for municipal, regional or federal museums and cultural institutions. Expand this idea and we are talking about fundamental different outcomes and approaches shaped by the employer. In most of Europe, the employer is the government. In the United States, the main employer is a private non-profit or profit-making cultural institutions, with the exception of municipal, State and Federal museums. Hence, an international association would become a cacophony of conflicting interests, because some researchers would be government civil servants, others would be working for the private art market, while others would be working for claimants and advocacy groups.

Define your terms

Before anything concrete can happen to transform provenance research into an internationally-recognized profession with its requirements, methods and approaches, licensure or certification procedures, we all must be clear about exactly what provenance research really is, and how it is practiced. Failing that, there is nothing to talk about. Instead of an association and its bureaucratic pitfalls, let us for now establish a strong global network of individuals and entities interested in the history of ownership of artistic, cultural and ritual objects, a network that would be inclusive and not exclusive, one with a maximalist understanding of the idea of research. That approach might help shape the contours of a generic definition of provenance research on which everyone could agree without feeling as if they betrayed their principles and ideals.

The never-ending post-Gurlitt “process”

by Marc Masurovsky

What is one to make of all this hoopla concerning provenance research in Germany? It took an ill-managed investigation into the activities of an octogenarian art collector, Cornelius Gurlitt, followed by a raucous international outcry to stimulate a debate over how museums in Germany treat their collections and the extent of knowledge they possess about the origins of the objects they own and curate.

Monika Gruetters to the left of Chancellor Angela Merkl

Since the announcement in early 2014 by Monika Gruetters, German Minister for culture, that she would increase funding for provenance research into the origins of art works in German state collections, the post-Gurlitt “process” has become even more bogged down in bureaucratic molasses as if the creation of yet another organization will magically make the problem of looted art simply go away.

The new entity, German Lost Art Foundation (Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste), will move to Magdeburg, Germany, in April 2015. Magdeburg is where one can find the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, run by Michael Franz and his deputy, Andrea Baresel-Brand. It is the official German governmental database on art looted during the Third Reich, known as lostart.de. One can find in that database the items which make up the residual of the Gurlitt collection, euphemistically known as the “Schwabing Art Trove.” The Foundation will receive 6 million dollars a year to bolster provenance research, or triple the annual allocation to provenance research in Germany up to now.

Judging by Ms. Gruetters’ own statements regarding the creation of the German Lost Art Foundation, the Office of Provenance Research (Arbeitsstelle fuer provenienzforschung), run by Uwe Hartmann, and the “Degenerate Art” program at the Free University of Berlin directed by Meike Hoffmann, will remain independent and might benefit from the largesse of the new Foundation.

Professor Uwe Schneede heads up the honorary board of the Foundation and Dr. Hermann Simon chairs its Research Council. Prof. Schneede is a highly respected figure in the German art world and Dr. Simon, head of the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin, a leading scholar of Jewish life in Germany and especially the Berlin Jewish community.

Hermann Simon

Uwe Schneede

A board of trustees (Stiftungsrat) constitutes the governing body of the Foundation which comprises 15 drawn from Federal, regional and municipal institutions throughout Germany. One big question concerns the funding of the Foundation: do the monies come only from German public sources or will there be an expectation that private entities should contribute to the Foundation? If so, which ones? How much information will the public receive on the underwriting of the Foundation and how it spends money on research?

The Foundation's Stiftungsrat

Added to this top-heavy approach to provenance research, let’s not forget the Kuratorium, an advisory body consisting of 9 to 11 individuals, some or all coming from outside Germany. Are they specialists, pundits, heavy lifters in international reparations negotiations relative to assets looted during WWII? None of this is clear. Why so many people to oversee provenance research in Germany? Are these 11 advisors going to be savvy about the intricacies of the ways in which artistic, cultural and ritualistic objects changed hands illegally between 1933 and 1945 or is this going to be another political love fest aimed at placating foreign critics of the German way of examining cases of cultural plunder dating back to the Third Reich?

For a full reading of the articles establishing the Foundation, please click on the following link:

http://www.kulturgutverluste.de/images/Satzung_Deutsches_Zentrum_Kulturgutverluste.pdf

In praise of future collaborative endeavors through provenance research training workshops

Preparations are currently under way to organize a third provenance research training workshop (the first two were in Magdeburg, Germany, and in Zagreb, Croatia) under the aegis of the Prague-based European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) and the New York-based Claims Conference. It is scheduled to take place in the first week of December 2013.

Lostart.de of the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg, Source: Aachener Zeitung

Until then, it is worth reviewing some of the more unusual by-products of bringing together for one intensive week thirty or so men and women of all ages who hail from more than a dozen countries… to discuss provenance research, art looting, restitution problems, collections management, forensic methods, Kultur, and any other topic that stimulates one’s interest in such a fulcrum of debate and exchange…:

Hrvatski drzavni arhiv, Source: HDA

Dialogue

This international workshop allows participants, instructors, and specialists to exchange, discuss, argue, disagree, lament, applaud, question, and otherwise engage in dialogue for approximately 50 hours spread out over six days.

Greater awareness

Participants report how the provenance research workshop has influenced the way in which they approach the history of art objects. Others have indicated the need to modify the questions that they ask when faced with problematic provenances. Still more have recognized the importance of historical context when trying to answer that nagging question: who really owns the object?

New paths of research and inquiry

This category applies mostly, but not exclusively, to the undergraduate and graduate students from universities and colleges on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean who attended the Magdeburg (June 2012) and Zagreb (March 2013) workshops. Some indicated how the workshop encouraged them to re-think basic assumptions that they had held about their various lines of inquiry pertaining to the displacement of art objects during the Nazi years. Others chose to examine new topics when they returned to their respective institutions of higher learning. In short, the stimulus produced by a week’s worth of intellectual discourse and exchange hit the mark.

Muzejski dokumentacijski centar, Source: MDC

Networking

The international provenance workshops do provide a unique moment to “network” in close quarters under controlled conditions. What is the end result? New chemistry, different bonds, yielding fruitful outcomes, new friendships, new sources of information, new knowledge… novelty and renewed commitments to make things better… as in proposing amendments to existing laws, facilitating recoveries of art objects, keeping current on on-going investigations into art crimes, assessing future possibilities to cooperate, realizing that research interests overlap, working together, sharing information...across cultures and disciplines, whether from North America, Western Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, other parts of Europe and the Middle East.

From Inside Neolithic Walls: On Collaboration and Cooperation

by Martin Terrazas, co-posting with ARCAblog

Individuals have asked me about the quality of the program offered by the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, similarly, the Provenance Research Training Program. Why travel across the Atlantic Ocean despite such expense? Why attend postgraduate certificate-based programs in unfamiliar cultures and societies?

Daily moments of cross-cultural communication at Caffé Grande evoke inspiration: Understanding the tone of a buongiorno is essential. The relationship between customer and barista in implicit. Friendliness and attempts to become more Italian are rewarded with pleasantries. The morning caffeine jolt is more than a financial exchange; it requires mutual cooperation and collaboration.

Therein lies lessons for preventing art crime and conducting provenance research. There is little room for undue opposition and overly emotional outbursts as both are forensic exercises, in which, ultimately, the objective is to determine who has proper title to a stolen object. Research, investigation, analysis, and context are essential. The desire to jockey into position for fame and fortune is futile; ambition, in Amelia, Magdeburg, Zagreb, and future conference cities, is better focused on becoming a more refined, cooperative and ethical professional.

The existence of dishonorable participants in the art market is given; the larger question is whether these individuals define the art market or rather the art market defines them. Experience with “Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume” and other databases allows me to realize that greed marks a loss of power and reputation. Rather than intrigue, the initials of Adolph Hitler and Hermann Göring on archival documents eternally evoke disgust and failure.

In saying benvenuto in the current “age of angst”, it is better to live in an environment of mutual cooperation.[1] Amelia and the think tank that settles into its crevices during the Mediterranean’s hottest months, similar to the periodic week-long efforts as a result of the 2009 Terezín Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues, empowers future generations to learn through discourse and discussion.

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[1] Joergen Oerstrom Moeller, “Welcome to the Age of Angst,” Singapore Management University, 12 August 2012.

Martin Terrazas is a student with the Association for Research into Crimes against Art. He is a contributor to the Holocaust Art Restitution Project. He assisted in the release and continues in the expansion of “Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects” – a cooperation between the Looted Art and Cultural Property Initiative of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, World Jewish Restitution Organization, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, National Archives and Records Administration, Das Bundesarchiv, and Ministère des Affaires étrangère et européannes. He participated in the Provenance Research Training Program – a project of the European Shoah Legacy Institute – hosted at the Koordinierungsstelle Magdeburg.