Some frequently asked questions

by Marc Masurovsky

a/ What is the total number of art objects claimed?

One should place the ultimate answer to this question in its proper context. By May 1945, somewhere between 15 and 20 million art objects of all sorts, from masterpieces to portraits of your favorite saints and relatives, had been misplaced due to civil unrest, persecution, war, genocide, and theft.

Of those misplaced cultural objects, a small number fit the moniker of “culturally-significant” or “national treasure” or both, depending on who is defining those two very odd expressions. For the sake of the argument, let’s just say 1 to 5 per cent of the misplaced objects fit those categories, or 100,000 (lowest number) to 1 million (highest number). The rest fell into the general bucket of culturally not so significant or insignificant, again, depending on who is expounding on this odd categorization.

Postwar Allied restitution policy ended up focusing on the 1 to 5 percent of objects lost or missing due to State-sponsored mischief between 1933 and 1945. For the rest, compensation schemes were foisted onto shell-shocked survivors and their kin due to an institutional absence of interest amongst postwar governments to aid those victims in locating and recovering their missing cultural property for reasons mentioned above. Many of the culturally significant objects and those earning the label of “national treasure” came from State collections plundered by the Axis or from private collections owned by rather wealthy individuals with close ties to State museums in countries dominated by the Axis. Those items received favored treatment in the eyes of the Allies and their representatives, referred to as “Monuments Men”.

The Allied powers’ prime directive was the rehabilitation of Europe (read that part of Europe not occupied or influenced by the Soviet Army and its government) especially as the incipient Cold War became a full-fledged game of geopolitical antipathy between former wartime allies.

As a consequence of the aforementioned factors and those tied to the inevitable human condition—people over property—most survivors did not file claims in the immediate postwar period and only did so after deadlines had passed and the only chance of recovering anything was close to 0.

By 1956, the US State Department had estimated that approximately several hundred thousand cultural objects of all kinds and shapes and value were still being claimed through its good offices by individuals from more than 30 nations.

From the mid-1990s to today, since there is no concerted international effort to tally the total number of claimed objects that are registered as such with national governments, we can only guess that, perhaps, the figure is close to or in excess of the number declared by the State Department in 1956, since most of the claims were never satisfied.

Nations that are signatory to international compacts known as the Washington conference of 1998 and the Terezin Declaration of June 2009 should conduct a census of all outstanding cultural claims registered as of now in their care and publish those results for public consumption.

b/ what is the total number of art objects restituted?

Historically, we only have repatriation figures from various postwar governments and official statistics regarding actual physical restitutions up to the early 1950s. Since then, there is very little public information that can be found about how many art objects were returned until the late 1990s.

Those nations that have established restitution committees (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Austria) have compiled figures regarding the number of objects that have been claimed through their auspices. But no statistics are tallied pertaining to the number of objects returned through direct negotiations with museums, auction houses, institutions, corporations, and private individuals.

c/ what is the total value of art objects sold after restitution?

The only indication of value comes from press reports about items being auctioned after restitution. It can safely be assumed that the objects with an Austrian provenance—mostly oil paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele—have fetched the highest prices at auction following their restitution, mostly due to the infatuation by the upper tiers of the global art market for such works, regardless of their inherent and implicit esthetic value. Those works alone have fetched in toto more than half a billion dollars. It might be safe to conservatively estimate the total value of restituted objects at slightly more than a billion dollars since the late 1990s. But that figure needs to be carefully verified through an elaborate survey of the field of art restitution.

d/ what is the total value of so-called “art restitution litigation?

This question is unfair and unjust but it does capture the collective imagination that impugns all sorts of evil motives to lawyers who seek opportunities wherever they can. We can only surmise how costly litigation efforts can be once we fuse the fees earned from seeking restitution and preventing restitution. Usually, fairly well-heeled law firms are recruited as outside counsel by museums in order to safeguard the integrity of their collections and rebuff attempts by claimants to assert their claims to title. On the plaintiffs’ side, there is an odd mix of solo practitioners and small and large firms involved in art restitution. All told, there are not more than 100 or so attorneys—yes, you read it!—who work on art restitution cases as an integral part of their legal practice if we combined North America, Europe and Israel. Since most plaintiffs cases are adopted on a contingency fee basis, usually 30 per cent, you should take the estimated value of restituted objects and divide that figure by three in order to get an idea on the estimated value of the litigation for plaintiffs’ lawyers. Likewise, for those lawyers defending their clients against outside claims, the fees can easily rise into the millions of dollars for each claimed object. Most of the claimed objects that are subject to intense years-long litigation hold values in excess of 1 million dollars.

Where does all of this leave the bewildered field of provenance research? You guessed it. The two main incentives underlying provenance research are to 1/ safeguard art objects which are part of a museum’s collection or that of an individual collector or 2/ obtain the restitution of such an art object.

What does this mean in terms of the objective and empirical integrity of the research being conducted on the history of an object? How do these legal undertakings affect the very nature of provenance research as distinct from its initial intent as an art-historical practice?

What is the future of provenance research and can it be salvaged as an objective, scientific field of inquiry?

Mea culpa, of sorts

by Marc Masurovsky

On August 2, 2013, an unusual workshop came to an end at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, capped by a two-hour symposium, half of which consisted of presentations summarizing the purpose and result of the workshop and the second half hosting questions from the audience.

The workshop was entitled “Politics of Repair”, already an interesting formulation pertaining to post-1945 attempts by governments and non-governmental organizations alike to come to terms with the material devastation wrought by 12 years of Nazi rule and years of occupation, domination, exploitation, and death, on its victims--men, women, and children of all ages, backgrounds, occupations, and nationalities.

Nine scholars, mostly from continental Europe (exclusive of island nations), staffed the workshop. Half of the scholars had worked in some capacity for national commissions in the late 1990s and early part of the 21st century.  These commissions had been established to provide a concrete framework through which to apprehend the extent of the physical and economic damage wrought on victims of Nazi policies and how best to “repair” the damage; hence, the title of the workshop. Their ultimate purpose was to frame the end of the discussion over reparations and restitution.

Why unusual? Perhaps because Holocaust memorials shun discussions over reparations and restitution, plain and simple. Thus, the mere fact that the most significant of all Holocaust memorials built since the 1990s actually hosted such an event is noteworthy.

Having been in the so-called trenches of the Holocaust restitution movement (as opposed to reparations) for several decades, I have a thing or two to say about the topic but always try my best to refrain from imposing a point of view, preferring to listen to what others have to say, especially scholars who have recently cut their teeth on what turns out to be a very complicated affair.

Let’s get to the point here:

During the question and answer period, I waited for about thirty minutes and then I spoke. At that point, I probably was a bit steamed because I vocalized my uncertainty about what it was exactly that I wished to ask the nine workshop historians. Finally, I found the question for which I still have no proper answer: why is it that the historical profession has waited more than six decades to tackle the questions of reparations and restitution resulting from the genocide of the Jewish communities of Europe? I reminded the workshop historians that this was not a personal question but could they give the audience a sense as to why the historical profession has ignored this complex topic for so long and what their future plans are about continuing their research in this specialized aspect of the Holocaust? No one seemed willing to come up with an answer, understandably, since it is somewhat "provocative" without wishing it to be so.  Still, it would be a rather simple affair for a historian to explain his or her motivations for working on the topics of reparations and restitution.  Apparently not.  Finally, one scholar attempted a reply, wondering out loud if this was a question, to which I replied in the affirmative. In essence, he provided a classical response about how in the case of postwar Germany, there was a general unwillingness to investigate the underlying themes of restitution and reparations for lack of interest and also out of fear of stirring numerous hornets’ nests. Hence, it was better for the Academy to just let it go and allow sleeping dogs to lie…

Then, another scholar attempted a more elaborate response. To summarize his meandering and obfuscating reply, he declared in no uncertain terms that it would be inconceivable for an academic lecture on the Holocaust and its aftermath to include any reference to reparations and restitution. Plain and simple. I stopped him right there and asked him to explain his statement. There was an attempt to deflect the question by declaring it off topic and more suited to a Jewish studies workshop.

Here, I blew a gasket. I admit it; it was not the most professional moment in my career, but my emotions got the better of me and I raised my voice and indicated that my question had everything to do with the topic at hand since it was directly relevant to our understanding of Jewish history, society and culture. Needless to say, the exchange was over. The point was made in a very awkward fashion that the Academy continues to shun in-depth examinations of restitution and reparations policies in the post-war era without wishing to explore their deep-seated meanings and how a closer examination of these issues might allow us to reach into some of the root causes and expressions of Nazi anti-Jewish policies. In other words, an academic discussion of restitution and reparations can only succeed if it leads to an economic analysis of the Final Solution, which had been driven in part by the Nazis’ desire to eradicate Jews both physically and materially—their complete elimination from economic and cultural life and the absorption of their assets into the New European Order.

All in all, this brief sparring incident brought under a crude light how difficult it is for historians, after the passage of three generations since the end of the Second World War, to address in a critical and scholarly way the economic underpinnings of the Shoah.

Although I am glad that “I stood my ground,” I am not happy that it had to happen in this manner, and, for that, I do apologize.

It is undoubtedly more acceptable to discuss how postwar governments have striven in different ways to “repair" the damage done to Holocaust victims and their families through "recognition" and "reconciliation", functioning as a paradigm through which memories of the Holocaust can be filtered into a narrative of genocide that prevents us from entering into awkward territories. What a shame…

Online Invitation
Source: Cvent via USHMM