Research and sanity during a pandemic

by Marc Masurovsky

 

Together with millions of men, women and children around the world, we have found ourselves trapped in a reality that we did not invite or want. 200,000 American citizens have lost their lives to a rampant virus which has not spared anyone that it comes into contact with. Failed public policies, reprehensible personal lifestyle choices and political callousness have only exacerbated what experts say was a highly preventable health crisis. 

 

The pandemic has taken a horrendous toll--emotional, physical and economic—on entire communities across the US and around the world. Although wearing a mask has turned out to be a no-brainer cheap way to stem the viral onslaught, for many, it’s an affront. An aspect of human behavior which I cannot fathom.

 

On a personal note….

 

My bedroom/study has become my operational epicenter, a small desk on which all of my tools are assembled—laptop, external drives, headset, printer, pens, post-its, lamp, the requisite pile of books, small teapot, tea cup and phone.  I do my best to keep the tea from spilling on the electronics.

 

My interactions with the outside world are even more filtered and skewed than before, relying almost exclusively on the technology of available bandwidth and uplinks to gain access to the internet, cable television, and Netflix. Staying sane is priority number one, tied with staving off COVID-19. The two have become unhappy bedfellows. Wanting to be hugged and held tight as a sign of human contact and love appear to be far off into the future.

 

On a professional note….

 

How can one make a project move forward that is anchored almost exclusively in on-site archival research? The National Archives are closed, as are the Archives of American Art (AAA) and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM.  The same with museums, universities and libraries.  Fold3.com (a digital container which contains a comprehensive sample of critical records pertaining to plunder during the Nazi years) and other research-focused websites have proven to be (relatively) lifesaving (not by much, though), making it possible to retrieve relevant documents. However, those digital resources have now been exhausted. 

 

The shuttering of archives on both sides of the Atlantic has put on hold, delayed and canceled entire research projects, many of which rely on cohorts of researchers and analysts plowing through archives in Paris, Munich, Koblenz, the Hague, Amsterdam, and London, to name a few. Furloughs and layoffs of research personnel across borders and oceans have been the inevitable consequence, sadly so, especially in the precarious freelance and independent research community but also in research facilities, small and large museums alike, and other cultural institutions. The long-term damage of these surgical operations against human capital is incalculable.

 

Can research projects survive in such a restrictive environment once on-site research and consultation of documents are no longer possible?  Is the Internet really cracked up to serve as a digital surrogate of real life? In the case of deep archival research, the short answer is no.  Data aggregators compiling information about works and objects of art sold at auction for the past three decades provide some limited solace which only fuels more anxiety and apprehension at the thought of conducting in-depth research.

 

Worst case scenario: the research stops, I/we hoist the white flag out of resignation and surrender in the face of a hopelessly vain quest to gain access to and obtain research materials.  

 

On a happier note…

 

The pandemic has put to the test long-established and newly emerging networks of affection and affiliation that bring together researchers, museum professionals, historians, cultural officials, archivists and librarians in many different countries and disciplines.  I can report with great relief that, so far as I have experienced and witnessed them, the ties that bind have so far have seemingly withstood the test of fractured physical encounters as evidenced by the amount of virtual assistance provided by archivists and specialists (so far) in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany. They have generously shared thousands of images of archival documents in unexpected expressions of collegiality and international cooperation.  Zoom conferences can only do so much but are a pale substitute for face-to-face organic encounters in enclosed spaces.

 

On a more personal note, the years-long hoarding of print and digital copies of archival documents has proven to be extremely useful. Under non-pandemic circumstances, this behavior might be viewed as suspect and an outward symptom of a serious psychological disorder.  Still, these virtual and physical mountains of documents have proven to be a lifesaver as they contain much relevant information, in most cases with the appropriate archival citation.

 

The continuing bad news is that the global health crisis shows no weakness, travel restrictions remain in place especially between the United States-major culprit in sustaining the pandemic—and a host of countries around the world. The better news is that archives are reopening in Western Europe under less than favorable circumstances for sustained research. The same goes for libraries and museums. Access—albeit limited--is resuming under restrictive conditions.

 

The next few years are going to be extremely challenging. In our narrow niche we explore the devastations wrought against culture, cultural rights and cultural goods, and the complexities of locating and recovering these displaced objects wherever they are.  Access to documents and know-how is essential to unravel the interlacing networks that favor and shape the displacement and dispersal of these objects over time and space. Without access to primary sources and other research efforts, it is difficult and oftentimes nigh impossible to understand the what, where, when, why and by whom of the problem. In order to mitigate our inability to gain access to documents, it is imperative that we shed whatever reluctance and reservation we may have about opening and sharing the knowledge that we have amassed over the years. We need to make it available to those who need it—personal company included--, so that all of our efforts, individual and combined, are not lost and wasted and they can be sustained, strengthened and disseminated so that we may all profit for our own good and for the common good.

 

Stay safe… This too shall pass. But at what price?

Archival research can be truly daunting

by Marc Masurovsky

Archival research can be truly daunting, no, let’s be clear, it is overwhelming and intimidating. And it is addictive.

The digital world is ubiquitous. Many of us cannot get through the day without “signing on”, clicking on a website, “googling” keywords, looking for art objects, artists, galleries, collectors, dealers, exhibits, framers, robbers, victims, you name it. The Internet is as good as the information which is made available to virtual searching.

The Internet is upon us, around us, at our fingertips. We can consult digital archives at any time of the day or night, documents which have been either photographed or scanned and compiled in clever ways with or without finding aids and inventories, so that we can find them more easily. These documents are “tagged”, described, to make it harder or easier for us to find them.

Physical archives still dominate our research lives, those where we choke on historical dust, where we actually get to touch the documents, stored in grey Hollinger boxes, or big fat oversized tan cardboard boxes, or we get to play with microfilms and microfiches, which only twenty years ago, were the peak of archival storage technology or so it seemed.

Research. For those who really enjoy getting lost in an archive, much like getting lost in the stacks of a library or a bookstore, reading finding aids, ordering boxes or microfilms, lifting files crammed with documents from their boxes, scrolling through images on a microfilm, searching for clues, seeking documents that might answer a riddle or two about a historical kerfuffle that happened many decades ago.

This might all sound like the raving words of a hopeless geek, but research is an acquired taste, rooted perhaps in a(n) (un)healthy dose of curiosity, sprinkled with stubbornness, persistence, and a refusal to accept the fact that there is no answer to the question that prompted the research in the first place. In the most extreme cases, arduous research in an archive can become an excuse for not writing, not committing the fruits of research onto paper. We all subject ourselves to such torture. It makes us human.

When you read a document, look for what is not written, ask: why was it written? what was its point: what is it not saying?

Never give up.

Ask questions.

Don't let up. 

Stay curious. 

Be inquisitive.

Krakow (May 2009), Prague (June 2009), and beyond (2009-2011): Anything new?

In mid-May 2009, a dozen individuals from the United States and Europe, mostly lawyers, one historian, and several representatives of the art market, met in a classroom in the former home of General Governor Hans Frank on the outskirts of Krakow, Poland. The purpose of the meeting was to come up with a statement that might offer an alternative to the impending, inevitable Holocaust Era Assets Conference of Prague, scheduled for June 26-30, 2009.

After a day and a half, compromise was in the air, rebellious spirits subsided, and in the interest of pragmatism, a declaration was hashed out to be presented in some form or another at the Prague Conference.

Six weeks later, delegates from more than 45 countries and representatives of international non-governmental organizations, cobbled together a lengthy declaration branded with the name of one of Nazi Germany’s most perverse concentration camp experiments, Terezin. The Terezin Declaration gave top priority to the salvage of the neediest of the neediest amongst the dwindling population of Jewish Holocaust survivors around the globe. Coming almost at the end was a statement about looted art which echoed in an even more diluted manner the Krakow Declaration of May 2009.

The international community pledged to meet its obligations towards survivors and put into place national and international mechanisms to settle property questions, including cultural assets. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs established an European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI), of which the initial mission was and continues to be to monitor the implementation of the Terezin Declaration and make recommendations on how best to accomplish that mission, providing annual reports on developments in signatory nations with respect to restitution, reparations, compensation, and aid to needy survivors. The implementation of the Terezin Declaration involves five major areas of activity, including looted cultural assets and Judaica.

Let’s take a look at where we are with respect to our favorite issue—looted art. One way to assess the situation is by looking at the relevant statements of the Krakow Declaration and the Terezin Declaration and measure them against concrete accomplishments recorded since July 1, 2009.

Aid to research:

Krakow: Exclusive government control of research into provenance and title issues and the failure to permit, encourage and enable independent research is not acceptable. We therefore urge nations to provide adequate funds to facilitate independent research and to make such research available to the general public.

The Terezin Declaration is mum on this point. As of now, the only countries which are funding provenance research at any scale are Germany and Austria.

Claims resolution:

Krakow: Taking into consideration the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, we urge all parties to ensure that claims to recover looted art are resolved expeditiously and based on the facts and merits of the claims, having taken into account legal, moral and other considerations, in order to achieve just and fair solutions.

Here, the Terezin Declaration is explicitly silent, but implicitly whispers something to the effect that mechanisms must be put into place for claimants. Nevertheless, despite the rare rulings coming from national restitution commissions (Holland, Germany, Austria), claimants are still forced to seek redress before the courts of their respective nations in expensive litigations. To date, no measures have been taken to alleviate the legal burden that befalls those who seek the return of their cultural property.

Cultural property and exports:

Krakow: Export control, cultural heritage and citizenship laws should not be applied to prevent the return of property to Holocaust victims. It is unjust for a country that took or came into possession of Holocaust looted property to keep it.

The Terezin Declaration ignores this point. All nations have invoked their cultural patrimony laws to prevent restituted property from leaving their territory under the pretext that those items belong to the cultural heritage of their nations. A tactic that has been used for decades now, during and after the Second World War. It is a perverse attack on the rights of individuals to be reunited with their cultural possessions and a clear abuse of power by nations seeking to prevent cultural items from being returned to their rightful owners.

Restitution laws:

Krakow: We urge nations to enact or modify laws and regulations to authorize the restitution of looted Holocaust cultural property to the rightful owners in appropriate cases.

Terezin: Where it has not already been done, we also recommend the establishment of mechanisms to assist claimants and others in their efforts,

As can be seen, the Terezin Declaration is a meek version of the Krakow declaration. However, let us not fool ourselves. Short of someone wielding a supranational equivalent of a nuclear detonator to convince nations to amend their laws so as to facilitate restitution procedures, there will be no amendments or new laws passed until the international community acts with one voice. It may very well be that an absence of political will at the national level might compel political solutions at supranational levels.

Legal impediments to restitution:

Krakow: Where statutes of limitations or prescription laws prevent the restitution of looted Holocaust property, they should be waived or exceptions for Holocaust looted property should be made in appropriate cases.

Terezin passed over this very delicate topic which constitutes the biggest legal impediment for anyone seeking a measure of justice in any asset category that was plundered during the Second World War. In some nations, stolen items can be converted after the passage of time into legitimately owned objects.

Inventories:

Krakow: We urge nations to conduct systematic surveys of works of art and other cultural objects in their collections, produce inventories of this property and make them available to the general public.

As expected, no one at the Prague Conference sought to press for the creation of inventories, a demand that has been largely unmet since the first calls for such inventories in the months that followed the collapse of the Third Reich. To date, inventories are fragmentary, incomplete, difficult to use and not updated.

Provenance research:

Krakow: We urge nations to conduct systematic provenance research and make the results available to the public.

Terezin: In particular, recognizing that restitution cannot be accomplished without knowledge of potentially looted art and cultural property, we stress the importance for all stakeholders to continue and support intensified systematic provenance research, with due regard to legislation, in both public and private archives, and where relevant to make the results of this research, including ongoing updates, available via the internet, with due regard to privacy rules and regulations.

Provenance research is one area where one can say that there has been progress, albeit limited. Efforts in most nations are not inspired by their governments, but rather by museum professionals, as in the United States, for instance. Fragmentary as they may be, those limited efforts when combined are proving the point—that concerted, coordinated international action must be carried out to facilitate complex research on individual objects, their owners, the dealers and institutions that carried them over time.

Conflict resolution in claims disputes:

Krakow: We urge nations to provide alternative dispute resolution mechanisms using qualified and independent experts.

Terezin: Keeping in mind the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, and considering the experience acquired since the Washington Conference, we urge all stakeholders to ensure that their legal systems or alternative processes, while taking into account the different legal traditions, facilitate just and fair solutions with regard to Naziconfiscated and looted art, and to make certain that claims to recover such art are resolved expeditiously and based on the facts and merits of the claims and all the relevant documents submitted by all parties. Governments should consider all relevant issues when applying various legal provisions that may impede the restitution of art and cultural property, in order to achieve just and fair solutions, as well as alternative dispute resolution, where appropriate under law.

Although there is an apparent overlap between the two declarations, lawyers and policymakers alike have warped the concept of a ‘just and fair solution”. Just and fair for whom? More likely than not, for the current possessor who is still viewed as an innocent party in the restitution process. Therefore, one needs to proceed with caution when promoting alternative dispute resolutions because fairness is in the eye of the beholder. By the way, there is nothing expeditious about the settlement of a cultural claim.

Access to archival records:

Krakow: Acknowledging that provenance research has priority over individual privacy protection, we urge nations to open all public records and archives pertaining to the looting of cultural property through various means including theft, coercion, abandonment, forced sales, and sales under duress; to make them accessible to researchers and the public, and to provide incentives for the accessibility of privately-owned archives.

The Terezin declaration might have implicitly supported access to archival records, both public and private. But, in order to achieve fair and just solutions, all relevant records must be made available and released so that all parties can equally benefit from the wisdom contained in those documents, be they letters, receipts, lists, telegrams, reports. Access to public records is going much faster than the facilitation of conflict resolution or provenance research. But private records remain locked behind closed doors, which is a detriment both to the art trade and to the general understanding of the history of ownership of cultural objects over time and space. Here too, political action and creative solutions might be needed to widen access to privately-held archives.

Monitoring:

Krakow: All nations should monitor restitution activity and make public annual reports on the making and resolution of claims and supply to the public accurate information about looted Holocaust property.

Although the Terezin Declaration omits this idea completely, it is contained in the generic recommendation for a post-Prague 2009 initiative—encapsulated by the creation of the European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI). However, there has yet to be any distinctive output from ESLI on this and related matters since its founding two years ago.

Documentation:

Krakow: We urge all nations to create facilities where information is available on restitution procedures in other countries.

ESLI is supposed to be one of the key facilities through which information can be found on the practice of restitution in countries that participated in Washington in 1998 and in Prague in 2009. Still, no word from ESLI. Everyone is anxiously waiting for product.

Where do we go from here?

That is an excellent question. So far, there are no good answers that translate into effective strategies.

It might very well be that, in order to move forward on all fronts, drastic measures and severe medication are needed to protect the rights of claimants, to ensure fair and equitable processes for deciding on the fate of claimed objects, and to raise the general level of awareness amongst specialists and laypersons alike as to the mechanisms of cultural plunder and its long-term impact on civil society.