Μια έντιμη πολιτιστική πράξη των Ολλανδών

Jan Adam Kruseman, Salome with the Head of John the Baptist (circa 1861). Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum.

 

Dutch Museums Discover Hundreds of Artworks Stolen by the Nazis—and They're Already Starting to Return Them

Ολλανδικά μουσεία ανακάλυψαν  εκατοντάδες έργα τέχνης που εκλάπησαν  από τους Ναζί  και ήδη αρχίζουν να τα επιστρέφουν 

Τα ευρήματα προέρχονται από τις έρευνες του  Museale Verwervingen (Ίδρυμα για την πιστοποίηση  της ταυτότητας και προέλευσης κάθε πολιτιστικού αγαθού που υπάρχουν στους μουσειακούς χώρους της Ολλανδίας),

Home - Museale Verwervingen vanaf 1933

το οποίο έχει αναλάβει έρευνες σε 163 ιδρύματα.

Sarah Cascone

Source: news.artnet.com

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Forty-two Dutch institutions have found 170 works of art that they suspect may have been stolen or confiscated under duress during the Nazi era. They include 83 paintings, one of which is in the royal collection, 26 drawings, and 13 Jewish ceremonial objects thought to have been lost between 1933 and 1945. The potentially looted art ranges from a Hans Memling in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam to a watercolor by Wassily Kandinsky in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
The findings come from the Museale Verwervingen project, which since 2009 has undertaken thorough investigations at the 163 member institutions of the national Museums Association. The only museum where research is still ongoing is Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. A team of five experts has been dedicated to sniffing out tainted provenances at the museum since 2012 and has thus far identified 22 potentially Nazi-looted objects.
“This research is important to do justice to history,” Chris Janssen, a spokesman for Museale Verwervingen, told the Guardian. “A museum can only show a piece of art properly if the story and history behind the object is clear. In other words: a museum must know which road a piece of art has traveled before it came to the museum. That’s the way possible to inform visitors in a good way.”
The project has already begun contacting the original owners or their descendants to jumpstart the restitution process. Some works have been returned, including a painting in the Dutch royal collection by Joris van der Haagen, purchased by former Queen Juliana in 1960 and publicly identified as Nazi loot in 2015.

Joris van der Haagen, The Hague Forest with a View of Huis ten Bosch Palace

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Dutch Museums Discover Hundreds of Artworks Stolen by the Nazis ...