The most expensive works of art in the world and their histories (or lack thereof)-Part Three

by Marc Masurovsky

7. The Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer II, 1912, by Gustav Klimt sold for 87 million dollars at Christie’s on November 8, 2006.

Adele Bloch Bauer II, 1912, Gustav Klimt

8. The Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I (The Lady in Gold) by Gustav Klimt, 1907, sold for 135 million dollars at the same sale.

Adele Bloch Bauer I, 1907, Gustav Klimt

These two portraits of Adele Bloch Bauer were painted by Gustav Klimt on the eve of the First World War. Klimt was a favorite of Viennese Jewish aristocrats. The portraits are lush and exuberant, yet Adele is unreachable and cold. Adele died at a young age in 1925. The Anschluss of March 10, 1938 resulted in the Nazi annexation of Austria into the Greater German Reich and in the wholesale dispossession of Jewish-owned wealth and property followed by the persecution and deportation of tens of thousands of Viennese Jews to concentration camps “nach dem Osten.” The Bloch Bauer family, one of the most financially endowed of Vienna, lost all of its property. Avid collectors of Klimt and other members of the Austrian Secession, the Nazis confiscated all of the family’s works of art which ended up in government depots in Vienna. Decades later, the Nazis gone, the paintings remained in Austria hanging at the Belvedere while the remnants of the family had resettled in exile including Adele’s niece, Marie Altmann. She consulted with Randol Schoenberg, an attorney in Los Angeles and grandson of the composer, Arnold Schoenberg. Randy (as he is known) took her case and spent the greater part of eight years trying to wrest the Bloch Bauer Klimts from the clutches of the Austrian government. He eventually took the Austrian government to the Supreme Court (Altmann v. the Repubic of Austria) and was able to establish “jurisdiction”, a legal maneuver that enabled Marie Altmann to sue the Austrian government in American Federal courts. That verdict tipped the scales against Austria. One possible outcome of the case would have been for Austria to buy back the paintings. But at fair market value, the Austrian government would have spent upwards of 300 million dollars for the paintings including the two portraits of Adele Bloch Bauer. It was unwilling to do so. Marie Altmann won the right to recover her family’s cultural inheritance. Upon restitution, Adele Bloch Bauer I and II went on the auction block.

9. Boy with pipe, 1905, by Pablo Picasso sold for 104 million dollars on May 5, 2004 at Sotheby’s.

Boy with a Pipe, 1905, Pablo Picasso

According to the Sotheby’s catalogue, this painting once belonged to the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family which sold it to the Swiss art dealer, Walter Feilchenfeldt, who headed the Cassirer gallery. Despite of and because of their wealth and status in Germany’s elite, the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family suffered racial persecutions much like the rest of the Jewish community of Germany. Many of their cultural and artistic possessions were sold under duress in the 1930s.

John Hay Whitney purchased “Boy with a pipe” in 1950. After Whitney’s death, the painting passed to his widow, Betsey. She died in 1998 and a family foundation established by Betsey took control of the Whitney family’s art. The foundation sold the Picasso and other works in 2004.

10. Nude, Green leaves and Bust (1932) by Pablo Picasso sold for 106 million dollars on April 30, 2010 at Christie’s. 

Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, 1932, Pablo Picasso

 This complex still life by Picasso was once owned by the fabled French Jewish art dealer, Paul Rosenberg. Fearing for his safety following the German invasion of Poland, Paul Rosenberg fled to New York leaving most of his property behind in Paris and several storage sites in central and southwestern France, including his world-renown stock of Impressionist and Cubist works. He stored some of them in a storage shed in Tours under the name of one of his employees, which apparently shielded those works from Nazi seizure. Paul and his brother, Edmond, recovered all of the art stored in Tours after France was liberated.

11. The Scream, 1895 by Edvard Munch sold for 119 million dollars at Sotheby’s on May 2, 2012. The seller was Petter Olsen, whose father, Thomas, had been a neighbor of Edvard Munch.

The Scream, 1895, by Edvard Munch

The reporting on the painting echoed other similar journalistic fawning over the staggering cost of a work of art. Usually, those paeans to the Everest of the art world tend to overshadow the actual history of the objects fetching such ridiculous sums. As it turns out, Munch’s acknowledged masterpiece of angst and despair, The Scream, had passed through many hands. According to the Los Angeles Times, the painting had a clear provenance, starting with Arthur von Franquet who sold it to Hugo Simon who sold it through an art dealer to Thomas Olsen in 1937 and thence by descent to Pette Olsen.

A posting on the ARCAblog which came on the heels of the fabled sale of the Munch painting summarized the history of the Scream as provided by the Sotheby’s auction house. There we learn that Hugo Simon purchased the painting in 1926 and consigned it to the Kunsthaus in Zurich, nearly 10 years later in December 1936. One month later, the painting presumably found its way to Stockholm where Thomas Olsen, the father of the seller, acquired the painting at M. Molvidson, Konst & Antikvitetshandel.

Meanwhile, one of the Hugo Simon heirs contacted the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) and expressed his concern that the painting had been sold by his great-grandfather under duress. Thus it was a forced sale, and Sotheby’s refused to acknowledge that fact. This additional element cast a pall on the entire sale. However, it was clear that nothing would stop this juggernaut of the auction market from doing anything to prevent the sale, especially because it represented such a hefty pay day for the auction house.

Five months after the sale, the Museum of Modern Art of New York announced that “The Scream” will be on temporary display as of mid-October 2012, thanks to one of MoMA’s trustees, Leon Black, who happened to be the lucky purchaser of the famed painting.

At this point, the local New York press took seriously charges made by Raphael Cardoso, Hugo Simon’s great-grand-son, that Hugo Simon had been forced to sell the Scream as well as most of his art collection as a direct result of his persecution as a Jew in Nazi Germany. He fled to Paris then to Brazil. The Nazis confiscated all of his assets in Germany, then, after the invasion of France, did the same with his few possessions in Paris, including his apartment and the art and furniture that it contained.
The Jewish Forward cited the October 14, 2012, article by Isabel Vincent and essentially reprinted Raphael Cardoso’s concerns. It is the only article that called into question the provenance of “The Scream,” by Edvard Munch.  Shortly afterwards, the online art world blog, Artinfo, titled an article: Is the Scream Nazi loot?  The Jewish Journal echoed the Simon heirs’ demand that, at the very least, MoMA accompany the Scream with an explanatory piece that echoed the context in which the painting changed hands once Hugo Simon tried to sell it in the mid-1930s. 

Finally, another blog, City Review, disclosed the fact that Pette Olsen, then owner of “The Scream”, had offered 250,000 dollars to the family that it could donate to whatever cause it desired. What the article did not mention is that Sotheby’s brokered this offer. The family turned it down on grounds that “it was insulting.”

In sum, a story that should have riled the art world became a “Jewish” story as only the Jewish and Israeli press took heed of the claim made by the Simon heirs that the iconographic painting of anxiety and despair portrayed so emphatically by Munch, could have been the subject of a forced sale.
If anything, the Munch painting’s travails echo once again the difficulty inherent in defining what a forced sale is, what duress really means, when faced with a claim for restitution seventy years later.

11. The dream, 24 January 1932 by Pablo Picasso sold for 155 million dollars on March 26, 2013, in a private sale between the casino billionaire, Steve Wynn, and the stockbroker billionaire, Steve Cohen, who was then under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Dream, 1932, Pablo Picasso

Victor and Sally Gancz had acquired the painting in New York for 7,000 dollars in 1941 and kept it in their possession until November 11, 1997 There is no information about who might have sold it to them and when the painting actually crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently, Gancz sold The Dream to an Austrian-born financier, Wolfgang Flöttl, whose name also appeared on the provenance of van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet.

Flöttl sold The Dream to Steve Wynn in 2001. In an unfortunate incident that made the news globally, Wynn tripped and tore the painting with his elbow. Following its successful restoration for which he spared no expense (as good as new if not better!), he offered it to Steve Cohen who had already expressed in it and would have acquired it earlier had it not been for the rip.

12. Les joueurs de cartes, early 1890s, by Paul Cézanne, sold for 259 million dollars in 2011 to a member of the Qatar royal family. The seller was a Greek billionaire, George Embiricos, who amassed an impressive art collection. 

Les joueurs de cartes, early 1890s, Paul Cezanne

The history of the painting is unknown, save for the fact that Embiricos “owned it for many years”,
Two leading lights of the global art world, Bill Acquavella and Larry Gagosian had presumably offered 220 million dollars for the painting. No deal.

Here we have one of the finest examples of Cézanne’s oeuvre, the second most expensive painting in the world, whose origins are unknown. All that we do know is that Paul Cézanne painted it in the early 1890s.  It left France at a certain point, ending up in Greece at a certain point where it stayed “for many years” before leaving for the Persian Gulf States. So much for “transparency.”

13. "Nafea Faa Ipoipo-When Will You Marry?", 1892, by Paul Gauguin sold in a private sale to the Qatar Royal Family for approximately 300 million dollars in February 2015.

When will you marry? 1892, Paul Gauguin

The seller is the Rudolph Staechelin Family Trust in Basel, Switzerland, which is run by Ruedi Staechelin, Rudolph’s grandson. The painting was on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel. The loan period ends in June 2015. Rudolph Staechelin amassed his collection during the interwar years and befriended most of the artists whose works he had purchased. His grandson, Ruedi Staechelin, a former auction house executive, has taken a strong position against the UNIDROIT convention which he views as “an enormous danger to public and private collecting”. UNIDROIT was put into place in the mid-1990s to remind the international community of the legal, financial, and ethical risks involved in trading and displaying stolen art. Staechelin proudly announced that Swiss museums, collectors and even the Swiss Art Trade Association, supported his stance against the international convention on trafficking of looted art. Now you know why Switzerland does not return, does not restitute, and does not repatriate looted cultural assets unless under threat of subpoenas, seizures and arrests. 

What a way to do business!

See the article by Julia Voss on the Gauguin sale that appeared earlier in February 2015 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Seeking guidance from INTERPOL

The words vary but their meaning does not.

Plunder, looting, theft, spoliation, misappropriation, pillage—call it what you wish, it all comes down to the same thing: someone somewhere has committed a theft of cultural items either under cover of an international military conflict, a domestic uprising or insurrection or major civil unrest, or simply has broken into someone’s home, place of business, or public institution to commit the crime of art theft.

Lawyers will have a field day arguing that each word connotes something slightly different. But as one famous unnamed general said at the end of the Second World War, “Theft does not convey title”. Period.

Since 1945, much has been said but little has been done to address in absolute terms the global problem of cultural theft, especially when it has been fueled by considerations of race, ethnicity, belief, and/or greed and lucre.

INTERPOL
Source: Wikipedia

No global solution to the problem of cultural property theft, cultural plunder and looting, can be achieved without the full and engaged participation of international organizations, especially since the founding of the United Nations in 1945.  As part of an on-going effort to spark more interest in the role of the organized international community of experts and officials who take at least a nominal interest in questions of art crime, let’s take a brief look at one institution—INTERPOL—and its pronouncements between 2004 and 2007 regarding international art crime.

First off, we paid a visit to INTERPOL’s website datelined 2007 and found these remarkable items under the rubric of “frequently asked questions” or FAQs” :

• “In fact, it is very difficult to gain an exact idea of how many items of cultural property are stolen throughout the world and it is unlikely that there will ever be any accurate statistics. National statistics are often based on the circumstances of the theft (petty theft, theft by breaking and entering or armed robbery) rather than the type of object stolen. To illustrate this, every year, the Interpol General Secretariat asks all member countries for statistics on thefts of works of art, information on where the thefts took place, and the nature of the stolen objects. On average, we receive 60 replies a year (out of 186 member countries), some of which are incomplete or inform us that no statistics exist.”
• To the question, “Which countries are most affected by this type of crime?”, the answer is…….
  
  France
  Italy
  Russia
  Germany
• The most sought after items by thieves as reported by law enforcement agencies are:
  
  Paintings
  Sculptures and statues
  Religious items
• INTERPOL’s General Secretariat devised the following tools “to tackle the traffic in cultural property”:
  
  A "wanted" poster:
  
  In 1986, INTERPOL published “THE 12 MOST WANTED WORKS OF ART’ poster.  The following year, the poster was renamed “THE MOST WANTED WORKS OF ART", printed in black and white and updated twice. Since 1998, the poster has been printed in COLOR!
  
  A database of stolen works of art:
  
  As of 2007, Interpol’s computerized database contained 26,000 stolen works of art. The main caveat for eligibility to be entered into the Interpol Stolen Works of Art database is that the object be “fully identifiable.”  The most astounding development occurred in 2010 when, for the first time, INTERPOL agreed to publish a series of paintings stolen from Max Stern, a German Jewish art dealer once based in Duesseldorf whose business was liquidated by the Nazi government and he was forced to flee to Canada.  At his death, Concordia University became the executor of his estate and launched a unique program under the guise of the "Max Stern Foundation" to publicize the cultural losses suffered by Max Stern and promote the identification and restitution of his cultural property, with some measure of success, thanks in part to the crucial role played by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unit of the Department of Homeland Security in the apprehension and restitution of some of Stern's works from private collections in the United States.

Max Stern in Germany, c. 1925
Source: National Gallery of Canada, Library and Archives, Fonds Max Stern via Max Stern Art Restition Project, Concordia University

Since INTERPOL is comprised of representatives from police forces the world over, it is well-positioned to make recommendations that allow its law enforcement members to do their job more efficiently and curb the global crime wave of art theft.

When reading these recommendations, please keep in mind that we are now in the year 2011. Our planet has suffered through two global wars since 1914 which accounted for combined human casualties of close to 80 million individuals and massive thefts of cultural property. Since 1945, there has been at least one international military conflict in some part of the globe. Each conflict has produced its fair share of cultural plunder.

INTERPOL believes that the following conditions need to be met in order to achieve lasting long-term solutions to the problems of global art crime:

1. bring in laws to protect cultural heritage and regulate the art market. 
2.  become party to international conventions (1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention)
3. prepare inventories of public collections using standards which will make it possible to circulate information in the event of theft
4. develop a computerized database along the lines of those currently in use, to avoid duplication of effort. 
5. circulate information on thefts as rapidly as possible
6. raise public awareness with regard to the cultural heritage both in the country and abroad
7. set up specialized police units to tackle this type of crime
8. hold training courses for the police, other law enforcement services and customs, with the support of cultural institutions.

In order to appreciate the tedium of political discourse at the international level and the degree to which raising international awareness can best be compared to La Fontaine’s fable of the “Turtle and the Hare” (We know who won the race, right?), here are some highlights of meetings convened by INTERPOL between 2004 and 2007:

Meeting place: Sinaïa City, Romania 
Date: September 7-9, 2004
Title: 4th International Conference on the Illicit Traffic in Cultural Property Stolen in Central and Eastern Europe

The participants acknowledged that there were serious problems east of the Oder River “concerning the protection and documentation of cultural property”.

They recommended the following:

• “To monitor the art market including the increasing sales on the Internet.”
• “To encourage the completion of inventories including photographs of cultural property for public and private collections using international description standards such as Object ID.”

Castelul Peles, Sinaia, Romania
Source: Wikipedia

Meeting place: Washington, DC
Date: May 23, 2005
Title: 3rd Meeting of the Interpol Tracking Task Force to Fight the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property Stolen in Iraq

The participants realized that the Internet is becoming a favorite venue for the sale of cultural items stolen in Iraq.

Meeting place: Lyon, France
Date: June 21-23, 2005
Title: 6th International Symposium on the Theft of and Illicit Traffic in Works of Art, Cultural Property and Antiques

The participants recommended the adoption of a “model export certificate for cultural property jointly developed by UNESCO and the World Customs Organization.”

More importantly, albeit very diplomatically, the participants invite their members to “consider adopting legislation and developing procedures that require proper examination of appropriate documentation for all cultural goods entering their country.” Remember, we are now in 2005, not in 1955.

The participants agreed to provide “relevant law enforcement agencies” around the world access to Interpol’s Stolen Works of Art database.

This one is the clincher:

The participants asked that the governments of their respective nations should “consider whether their cultural heritage legislation should include a provision for proof of ownership of cultural property prior to their trade.” In other words, was there no requirement until 2005 to prove the ownership of a cultural item before it entered the art trade?

Other recommendations included:

“Countries seeking the return of their cultural property provide adequate relevant documentation detailing the date and place of the theft with a full inventory of the stolen objects including descriptions and photographs. For incidents of looting, date and place with documented justification of the provenance of the items should be provided.”

“Establishment of minimum documentation for all cultural objects and use of the Object ID checklist for this purpose.”

Meeting place: Lyon, France
Date: March 7-8, 2006
Title: 3rd Meeting of the Interpol Expert Group (IEG) on Stolen Cultural Property

The participants admitted that they needed the assistance of “art market professionals in the trade in cultural objects” in order to enable law enforcement agencies to locate stolen cultural items more effectively. Interesting… Should one surmise that the international art trade has not had to worry about the heavy arm of law enforcement until very recently?

As a result of high-profile looted art cases which required years of litigation and tentative outcomes, the participants focused on alternative dispute resolutions as one way of facilitating the restitution of stolen art to countries of origin.

Not only did they propose that “law enforcement agencies extend their co-operation efforts to art market professionals as valuable partners and sources of information,” but, in the same breath, the participants suggested that “creative solutions” be found to facilitate the “return of cultural objects.” These solutions might include: arbitration, conciliation, mediation or negotiation procedures. More worrisome is the notion that long term loans could be used as an acceptable compromise to achieve the return of coveted stolen objects. Worrisome in light of the deals struck by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. These institutions have sufficient clout, despite their egregious behavior concerning the harboring of looted art and antiquities, to convince the injured parties—in these instances, foreign nations—to accept complex deals whose outcome is to dilute the responsibility of the institution responsible for benefiting from the misappropriation of a cultural object.

In other words, the aiding and abetting of art crimes has a way of turning into a profitable moment for all parties concerned, fueled for the most part by commercial and financial incentives at the expense of ethics. Let's hope that INTERPOL and other like-minded well-intentioned organizations do not fall into this gilded trap.  Theft is theft, no matter how you look at it and cultural institutions that profit from it should be held accountable even if it costs them an exhibit or two and the ill-gotten items that they have acquired.

What’s up with Norway?

On the face of it, the Norwegian government is behaving most appropriately. It has imposed a strict bank on all imports of cultural artifacts whose provenance cannot be demonstrated properly. As proof, posters greet you when you enter the country by air which ask: “are you robbing the cultural heritage of another people?”.

Norway has adhered since 2001 to the UNIDROIT Convention on the Illicit Trade of Cultural Property and has passed legislation to reflect that posture.

And yet…

When it comes to historical thefts dealing with one of the country’s darkest chapters—the Nazi occupation starting in Spring 1940--, Norway is mum and absent. Why?

To wit:

In 1948, Norwegian institutions and private individuals had filed claims with the US authorities in occupied Germany which covered close to two thousand objects. The US military in charge of investigating claims pertaining to thefts of works and objects of art during the Second World War shut down those claims in June 1948. One of the more important claims stems from the National Gallery of Oslo, not for its own losses, but for the forced removable of more than 900 works of art consigned to its care by private individuals across Norway.

Claim Claimant Number of Items NOR-1 Norwegian government 1 painting NOR-2 Norwegian Army Museum an entire exhibit NOR-3 National Gallery of Oslo 20 paintings NOR-4 Rastad, Arnold 10 paintings NOR-5 Norwegian Free Masons 2 paintings, books and a sword NOR-6 Private collections 796 paintings NOR-7 Norwegian government 2 paintings, 1 water color NOR-8 Norwegian government 1 painting NOR-9 Norwegian government 1 painting NOR-10 Norwegian government 1 picture, 1 painting, 4 books NOR-11 Norwegian government 956 paintings

"Norwegian government" may mean either State institutions or the government on behalf of private owners. In that regard, NOR-6 and NOR-11 fit in that category.

Today, the country which went on record for prosecuting most vigorously those within its ranks who had collaborated with Quisling and his pro-Nazi acolytes has turned a blind eye on any attempt to recover items plundered from its territory to the point of sheer indifference. What’s up with that?

Canada and looted art

Ten years ago, on November 15-16, 2001, an international conference on looted art took place under the auspices of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, organized by the Canadian Museum Association (CMA) and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). The conference brought together all parties and individuals involved at the time with the issue of looted art. They represented the private art market, the public sector, NGOs; there were numerous lawyers representing both sides of the debate, claimants, historians, and researchers. In the course of two days of animated discussions and presentations, the participants agreed to articulate a series of points and principles from which to issue recommendations for future action in Canada and beyond.

The following is a summation of those debates. There are official reports of the conference and its effects on Canadian institutions that you can consult on-line via the Claims Conference website. Take what you will from them.

The good news is that the discussion was friendly, productive, and pragmatic. The not-so-good news is that everyone went home and not much happened in Canada to push forth the debate on restitution in a manner consistent with the wishes and concerns expressed by the participants. Judge for yourself:

Canada, like so many other countries where there is an art market, is a recipient of loot and has been for decades.

It is a general, albeit vastly understated fact, that 90% of looted art is ‘invisible’ to traditional art historians, and scholars. Although issues pertaining to cultural plunder are not new, there is widespread ignorance of its scope and breadth in the art world, government circles, and the Jewish Community of Canada.

As of 2001, there were no laws on the books—Federal, provincial, or local--to deal with this issue. Dr. Franklin, of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, host of the Looted Art Conference, was quick to say that “There is no legal obligation [for museums in Canada] to restitute.”

Museums have no legal obligations to return stolen works of art to their rightful owners. If claims are filed against individuals, they will be subject to local laws governing statutory limits, laches, good faith purchasing, willful blindness and due diligence. In sum, there are no overt mechanisms in Canada either at Federal or local level for dealing with Holocaust-era cultural property claims.

Then and now, there are few if no resources—human, financial, archival, bibliographical, and academic—for undertaking a serious, exhaustive, review of all institutional holdings in Canada in an effort to identify looted art. Scattered efforts have been duly noted amid 4 largest museums in Canada, as well as in a few smaller institutions.

Everyone acknowledged that there are no short-term fixes to the problem. Solutions are long-term.

What is to be done?

The participants came up with a series of goals to consider for bringing about needed progress on the subject of looted and art restitution:

• To identify all looted works in Canadian collections.
• To facilitate recovery of such works by rightful owners.
• To prevent resale of looted/stolen works on Canadian art market—public/private
• To create legal/policy environment to facilitate identification and recovery of stolen works of art.
• To establish common standards of evidence that fall outside of traditional rules of civil procedure.

How can these goals be achieved?

Obviously, one cannot expect any assistance from the Federal government, at least not in the short-run.

The onus of support therefore falls on provincial governments: they should either enact or modify laws that facilitate recovery and restitution, and that acknowledge the problem of stolen cultural property.

Museums must conduct reviews of holdings and identify looted works in their collection, ascertain their status, whether those objects have been recovered or not.

The provinces should put forth standardized responses to this problem.

The Canadian Museum Association, ICOM, and other art and cultural property groups, should petition the Federal government to study the problem and produce a Green Paper (the Canadian equivalent of an American White Paper).

The legal experts at the Ottawa Conference agreed that restitution principles should be anchored in local and provincial laws because of the absence of any Federal law in Canada and of Canada’s obstinate refusal, like that of the United States and dozens of other countries, to sign the UNIDROIT convention on stolen and illicit cultural property.

However, conflict resolution in provincial and local jurisdictions will be subject to different legal regimens and rules governing statutes of limitations, laches, burden of proof and rules of evidence.

Hence, any legal strategy must be focused on a moral and ethical appeal to institutions to restitute, founded on the London Declaration of 5 January 1943—the Inter-Alled Declaration Against Axis Acts of Dispossession. The operating principle has been and should always be: if the work was stolen, theft does not convey title. Even this adage has its variants in countries where the possessor of stolen property can become the rightful owner of the stolen object if no claim has been filed against it over a set period of time.

According to Bonnie Czegledy, the good faith purchaser in Canada cannot hide behind ignorance of the fate of acquired works—which is also referred to as willful blindness. Due diligence rules apply, which involve on the part of the acquirer of the art object to engage in research that would enable her/him to be convinced of the licit/illicit status of the object and base her/his decision to acquire or not the object as a result of this research.

Fill the legal loopholes regarding the resale of stolen works of art.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CANADA:

• Define looted object to include EVERYTHING cultural, including antiquities and books/manuscripts, decorative objects.
• Create legal/policy environment to facilitate identification and recovery of looted works
• Establish common standards of provenance research, evidence and claims adjudication for Canada.
• Conduct a census of all institutional collections in Canada susceptible of containing looted works. Prioritize risk to institutions regarding the repatriation of works. The purpose of this census is to assess the breadth and scope of the problem of looted art in public and private collections. For this to occur, establish a core group of researchers to do initial research and that can travel to all collections across Canada, with financing from provincial governments and Federal foundation endowments, provided that the funding is renewable until the census is completed.
• Ask the Canadian Museum Association to adopt an assertive strategy that will facilitate ultimate goals; it should communicate guidelines to museums on how to deal with the public and with claimants.
• Petition the Federal government to issue a Green Paper on accession to the UNIDROIT convention on stolen and illicit cultural property. The Federal government involvement in the issue of looted art could begin with the creation of a Central Web Portal run by Canadian Heritage Info Network or another entity so as to respond to inquiries and disseminate information.
• Invoke as the moral framework for treatment of looted art claims in Canada the London Declaration of January 5, 1943, or the Inter-Allied Declaration against Axis Acts of Dispossession. Canada signed it together with 15 other countries, including the United States and Great Britain, leading co-sponsors and formulators of the Declaration.
• Build a network of assets and skills in Canada and elsewhere to facilitate research efforts.
• Create a third-party group which oversees claims if the Federal Government refuses to handle them. Encourage the creation of provincial offices within existing agencies to process claims modeled after HCPO in NYC. This NGO would be supported by the Federal government and owned by the community. The stakeholders would include: museums, the art world, claimants, Jewish and arts and cultural property groups, historians, researchers, scholars, experts, government representatives, with a balanced private/public membership. It would be transparent and completely accessible.
• Identify all pertinent records dealing with looted art which can be found in Canadian archives--governmental, academic, institutional, civilian and military.
• Produce a guide of those records, similar perhaps to NARA’s Guide on Holocaust-Era Assets
• Incorporate the Canadian Jewish community as well as arts and cultural property organizations into these efforts for education, outreach, lobbying, fundraising, and logistics.
• Promote the training of individuals in provenance research through universities, cultural institutions and at all levels of government—local, provincial, and Federal. For instance, recruit graduate students from Young Canada Works for provenance work who have art history, history, museum science, forensics and related backgrounds.
• Seek public and private funds perhaps even from the UN and the EU to include museums, auction houses, independent scholars, government agencies, as part of an overall effort to stanch the resale of looted works on the art market.

Internationally:

• Promote the creation of an international research network to assist provenance checks.
• Create a third-party group or panel to oversee claims adjudication and to conduct research.