Showing results 25 - 36 of 50 for the tag: Nazi loot.

December 30, 2010

Austrian commission rules that Nazi looted art should be returned

Posted at 8:09 pm in Similar cases

An art commission set up by Austria’s Ministry of Culture has ruled that the country’s Leopold Museum should return seven Nazi looted paintings to their rightful owners.

From:
Bloomberg News

Nazi-Looted Art Should be Returned by Museum, Austrian Commission Rules
By Jonathan Tirone – Nov 24, 2010 10:06 AM GMT

Austria’s Leopold Museum should return seven Nazi-looted paintings by Egon Schiele and Anton Romako to their rightful owners, said an art commission set up by the country’s Ministry of Culture.

Five Schiele paintings and two Romako works should be returned, the ministry said yesterday on its website. The paintings had belonged to Maurice Eisler and Karl Maylaender, both Jews persecuted by Nazis, according to the commission. The decision is non-binding.
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December 8, 2010

Information on over ten thousand un-restituted artworks looted by the Nazis available online

Posted at 11:06 pm in Similar cases

More than sixty years on, vast numbers of artworks looted by the Nazis still haven’t been returned to their original owners (or their descendants). A new database which lists these items hopes to make it a lot easier for people to track them down.

From:
PR Newswire

More Than 10,000 Unrestituted Nazi-Looted Art Objects Now Listed on Internet; Call to Museums, Dealers to Check Holdings
NEW YORK, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/

The Nazi records and photographs of the looting of more than 20,000 individual art objects from Jews in France and Belgium are now online in a searchable database, which shows that at least half the objects have not been restituted to their original owners. This new listing – searchable by item, artist, owner, and whether items have been returned – should be consulted by museums, art dealers, and auction houses to determine whether they hold any Nazi-looted art, and by families seeking long-lost valuable heirlooms.

Many families know or believe that relatives killed in the Holocaust owned artworks, but may do not know the pieces’ names or artists; this list can help them search family holdings. However, there is no centralized claims process for unrestituted works in this database. Unlike previous attempts to identify looted art, which have focused on museum collections or lists of claims from individual victims or their heirs, this new database aims to reconstruct the totality of what was seized and from whom, as well as what has been restituted, so as to produce a listing of looted art objects still believed to be “at large.”
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November 14, 2010

Ghent’s “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” theft & reunification of the world’s most frequently looted artwork

Posted at 3:38 pm in Similar cases

The Ghent Altarpiece, also known as the “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” is a complex polyptych panel painting made up of twenty four separate scenes painted onto a number of panels. Since it was completed in 1432, at various times, many of the panels have been stolen or looted or lost by other means & at the same time, various attempts have been made to reunify all the surviving panels & where possible to replace the missing ones with copies. It has some odd parallels with the Parthenon Marbles, althogh the attempts to reunify it have been far more successful.

From:
Basil and Spice

Book Review: Stealing The Mystic Lamb By Noah Charney
Oct 5, 2010
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen

‘Stealing the Mystic Lamb’: Strange World of Art Theft Revealed With Emphasis on the Most Frequently Stolen Artwork of All Time

Question: What Is the Most Frequently stolen artwork of all time?

Answer: Read Noah Charney’s “Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece” (PublicAffairs, 336 pages, color and black and white photographs, notes and sources, bibliography, index, $27.95) to discover that truth is indeed stranger than fiction in the world of art theft and looting.
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December 8, 2009

Benevento Missal to return under new Nazi loot law

Posted at 2:08 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

The Benevento Missal is likely to be the first artefact to be returned under the new Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Act. This is an interesting case, as it was one of the pointers that highlighted that a chance in the law was necessary. The British Library returned it – but only as a permanent loan, as the law would not allow them to transfer ownership rights. It is also interesting though that the first case highlights the major loophole created by the new law. Because of the difficulty in proving that artefacts were looted specifically by the Nazis, the law instead covers any art looted during that time period – with the assumption that such cases will typically relate to the Holocaust. In the case of the Missal though, there is no specific evidence to tie its removal from Italy to Britain to the Nazis. This fact was highlighted by the Marbles Reunited campaign in a submission to a consultation in 2006 by the DCMS Select Committee. Whilst such returns are admirable, the inconsistencies in the law & piecemeal legislation only serve to highlight that large institutions will not step back & look objectively at restitution issues as a whole, rather than picking bits out here & there, to try & appease people while most cases remain un-discussed.

From:
The Times

December 1, 2009
British Library to return Benevento Missal under Nazi loot law
Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent

A medieval book is to become the first item from a British national museum to be returned to its rightful owners under a new law governing looted artefacts.

The Benevento Missal, which was stolen from a cathedral in southern Italy soon after the Allies bombed the city during the Second World War, has been in the collection of the British Library (formerly the British Museum Library) since 1947. After a change in the law, it could be back in Italy within months, according to The Art Newspaper.
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December 4, 2009

Nazi looted artefacts in the UK can now return home

Posted at 1:41 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Further coverage of the new law passed to allow the return of artefacts looted during the Nazi era held in UK museums. If this law had been in place previously, it would have avoided such (unsuccessful) court cases as Attorney General v Trustees of the British Museum AKA the Feldmann Case.

It will be interesting to see how many cases now come to light following the passing of this new law (to take a cynical point of view, it could be argued that the law was only passed because certain interested parties knew that there were only a very small number of items in their collections that were likely to be affected by it).

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 14:06 GMT, Friday, 13 November 2009
UK museums can return looted art

Artefacts in national museums found to have been looted by the Nazis can now be returned to their rightful owners, thanks to newly-passed legislation.

The Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Act gives national institutions in England and Scotland the power to return art stolen during the Nazi era.
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November 29, 2009

Holocaust looted art bill will allow de-acessioning of some artefacts

Posted at 11:09 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

More coverage of Andrew Dismore’s bill to allow museums to over-ride their governing charters & return artefacts looted during the Nazi era.

From:
Hendon & Finchley Times

Looted artwork from the Second World War could be returned under new bill tabled by Hendon MP Andrew Dismore
12:31pm Tuesday 10th November 2009
By Kevin Bradford

A LAW allowing artwork looted by the Nazis to be returned to families is set for royal approval this week.

A number of historic items, which were taken by the regime from homes during the Second World War, are on display in galleries and museums in Britain, but are prevented by current laws from being handed back to those families.
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November 24, 2009

Changing the law on looted artefacts

Posted at 1:50 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Andrew Dismore’s bill on looted art from the Holocaust now looks increasingly likely to become law – this is very significant for UK museums as like the Human Tissue Act before it, it opens up another hole in the anti-deaccessioning clauses that govern them, making clearer the need for a complete rethink of these issues rather than piecemeal legislation that only gets passed by sidestepping some of the other big issues.

From:
Totally Jewish

Fri, Nov 6, 2009
My Bid to Change the Law on Looted Art in the UK
Andrew Dismore

Once a year, Parliament is like the New Year sales, as we’re forced to queue for the remaining slots for Private Members Bills, after the best slots are taken by those who win the ballot.

So, early one evening a year ago, I unrolled my sleeping bag on the Public Bill Office’s floor to be first in line to table my proposed new laws the following morning. Against the odds, one of my Bills has got all the way through and will come into force in a couple of months time – the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill.
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July 13, 2009

Nazi loot in UK set to be returned

Posted at 12:54 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

The Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill looks likely to become law. This opens a new special case in Acts of Parliament such as the British Museum Act that govern museums – defining a type of artefacts that the museum can legitimately deaccession from their collections

From:
ITN

Nazi art set to be returned
Last update: Sat Jul 11 2009 09:08:33

Artworks looted by the Nazis that have ended up in UK galleries could be returned to their owners.

Labour’s Lord Janner of Braunstone, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said around 20 looted pieces are believed to be held in national collections.
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July 11, 2009

Why India should support the return of the Elgin Marbles

Posted at 11:44 am in Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

The Elgin Marbles & what their return would represent is something that has implications for many people – not just Greeks, archaeologists & museum curators. Around the world are numerous restitution cases, each different in its own way, but each having a significance for the people involved. During the last year for instance, publicity has been generated by various artefacts from India that people would like returned (or even just an acknowledgement of the real ownership.

From:
Livemint

Why India should root for the return of the Elgin marbles
Manidipa Mandal – Thursday, July 09, 2009 1:25 PM

“Both sides stand on shaky ground,” prevaricates NYT critic Michael Kimmelman, in today’s Business of Life lead story.

The Greeks, never in fear of racial stereotyping, have been emphatic in their demands. (What’s to worry about? Everyone just knows they are the guys with the big weddings, the voluble chatter, the long community lunches, dinners and and dances, the quick and loud tempers a la Hollywood cabbies — and all that surprisingly, uncharacteristically subtle and contemplative, ancient art and literature, as well as balanced modern views on them.)
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June 30, 2009

Nazi art restitution bill likely to become law

Posted at 1:07 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

Andrew Dismore’s bill to allow the return of items looted during the holocaust now looks as though it is likely to become law. I would question though whether the problem it deals with is the loophole that it is described as here – to my mind it was very deliberately created part of the regulations governing many museums – although now some of its side effects are becoming less palatable to the public.

From:
Artinfo

House of Commons OKs Restitution Bill on Nazi-Looted Art
Published: June 29, 2009

LONDON—A British bill that, at least in theory, would help return artworks looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners has cleared the House of Commons and now goes to the House of Lords. Members of Parliament in the House say the measure is largely symbolic and may never be used, but they believe it still sends an important signal about correcting an injustice.

Andrew Dismore’s Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill will plug a legal loophole preventing restitution in some cases. The bill covers such institutions as the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum, and it allows the Spoliation Advisory Panel to assess whether a work of art was looted and then recommend to the culture secretary if it should be returned. According to Dismore, a Labour Member of Parliament, the best estimate is that there are about 20 looted items in U.K. museums, although there could be more.

May 12, 2009

The problems of comparing looted artefact disputes with child custody cases

Posted at 12:48 pm in Elgin Marbles, Similar cases

Kwame Opoku responds to some of the disingenuous analogies that try to draw parallels to other issues.

From:
Afrikanet

Datum: 12.05.09 09:29
Von: Dr. Kwame Opoku
Comparing disputes about looted artefacts with child custody cases

I find the proposal to apply principles developed in child custody cases to disputes regarding the ownership of looted artefacts, very interesting but also problematic and, in the end, not feasible. (1)

To compare cultural artefacts with children under any circumstances is itself very disputable. Artworks cannot be compared to children and hence from the very nature of the subjects concerned, the comparison falters. A good judge would try to ascertain the wishes of a child at the centre of marital dispute but we surely cannot ask an art object where it would like to be, Berlin or Benin?
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May 8, 2009

Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill draft wording

Posted at 12:57 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

The Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill has now been published in its current form, shortly before its second reading in Parliament. This bill if it becomes law will allow the return by museums of artefacts looted during the Nazi era, something that in many cases is currently not possible, as proved by the Feldmann Case in 2005.

From:
UK Parliament

Session 2008 – 09
Internet Publications
Other Bills before Parliament
Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill

Contents

1 Powers of de-accession
2 Applicability
3 Short title and commencement

Bill 35

A Bill To provide for the transfer from public museum and gallery collections of arts, artefacts and other objects stolen between 1933 and 1945 by or on behalf of the Nazi regime, its members and sympathisers; to provide for the return of such artefacts and objects to the lawful owners, their heirs and successors; and for connected purposes.
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