Mar 6, 2021

Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Stiftung Board, Advisory Council and Staff March 2021


JEWISH DIGITAL CULTURAL
RECOVERY PROJECT FOUNDATION

 https://jdcrp.org/foundation/

The JDCRP Foundation, “Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Stiftung”, headquartered in Berlin, is the legal administrator of the project and is subject to the German Civil Code. The Foundation embodies the governing framework for the project, and ensures its financial viability. It is comprised of a Board of Trustees, an Executive Board and an Advisory Council. 

The JDCRP Foundation’s purpose is to promote scholarship and research through a coordinating body responsible for collecting relevant historical documentation from a wide range of institutions. These documents address the plunder of Jewish-owned cultural assets by the Nazis, their allies and collaborators, between 1933-1945, including their postwar fate. 

BODIES OF THE FOUNDATION

The Board of Trustees advises, supports and monitors the Executive Board pursuant to the foundation’s statutes, in order to fulfill the will of the founders as effectively as possible.

The Executive Board conducts the running business of the foundation according to the foundation’s objective as well as the resolutions of the Board of Trustees and statutory laws.

The Advisory Council supports the Executive Board and Board of Trustees with its advice. The Advisory Council may develop recommendations towards the realization of the Foundation’s objectives.

Board of Trustees

Rüdiger Mahlo, Chair
Representative in Germany, The Claims Conference

Dr. Zsuzsanna Toronyi
Director, Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives

Jacqueline Scalisi
President, Commission for Art Recovery

Executive Board

Dr. Wesley Fisher
Director of Research, The Claims Conference

Additional members to be appointed.

JDCRP Foundation Advisory Council

Richard Aronowitz
Sotheby’s

Dr. Andrea Baresel-Brand
Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, Germany

Jérôme Benezech
Commission pour l’indemnisation des victimes de spoliations, France

Dr. Sylvia Naylor
National Archives and Records Administration, U.S.

Monica Dugot
Christie’s

Bart Eeman
Ministère des Affaires économiques, Belgium

Dr. Christian Fuhrmeister
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Germany

Dr. Andrea Hänger
Bundesarchiv, Germany

Dr. Thomas Kirchner
Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art, France

Michael Levy
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Dr. Pia Schölnberger
Kommission für Provenienzforschung beim Bundesministerium für Kunst, Kultur, öffentlichen Dienst und Sport, Austria

Filip Strubbe
Archives générales du Royaume, Archives de l’État en Belgique

Juliette Trey
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, France

David Zivie
Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945, Ministère de la Culture, France

Staff

Avishag Ben-Yosef
Project Manager, JDCRP Pilot Project (more details on Pilot Project page and below)

Marc Masurovsky
Academic Director, JDCRP Pilot Project (more details on Pilot Project page)

Simone Kogge
Financial Officer

Ashley Argüello Blaison
Communications Officer

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THE PILOT PROJECT




On January 1st, 2020 the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project (JDCRP) launched its Pilot Project Co-Funded by the European Union (EU): The Fate of the Adolphe Schloss Collection.

  • The Pilot Project will create a model for a comprehensive object-level database of art and other cultural objects looted by the National Socialists and their allies.
  • In addition to creation of a central registry of plundered cultural objects, the initiative is based on archival sources scattered throughout Europe and beyond and will be helpful to Holocaust education and provenance research.

The annihilation of Jewish culture as well as the unprecedented displacement of art objects during the Nazi era has never been fully documented. The major goal of the Pilot Project, which will last a year and a half, is to test the feasibility of an all-encompassing database while exploring different methodological approaches that bring together research tools and technological solutions. The aim is eventually to serve as a due-diligence checkpoint for the art market – auction houses, art galleries and art fairs, as well as museums, libraries and governments – by creating a modular set of educational materials that will enable the conducting of complex research. The European Union supports the project because – while looking at the fate of the art objects displaced all around Europe – it brings forward the value of Europe’s shared cultural heritage to be promoted, protected and safeguarded for future generations. The initiative goes hand in hand with other EU efforts to promote and safeguard Europe’s cultural heritage and to prevent cross-border transfers of illicit cultural goods.

THE ADOLPHE SCHLOSS COLLECTION

The Pilot Project has selected as its underlying case study the renowned art collection of Adolphe Schloss that was looted by the National Socialists and their collaborators in 1943. Adolphe Schloss (1842, Furth, Bavaria -1911, Paris), a distributor of goods for large department stores in France, North America, and the Russian court, assembled together with his wife, Mathilde Lucie Haas (d. 1938) and through a network of high-end art dealers, a magnificently-curated and famed collection of 333 Old Masters’ paintings, mainly Dutch and Flemish, that hung at the family house at avenue Henri-Martin in Paris.

Interior of the Schloss mansion, Courtesy of the Museum of the Art and History of Judaism (Mahj), Paris

In 1939, his four children transferred the collection to the château de Chambon in Corrèze, France. In April 1943, the National Socialists and Vichy agents and officials confiscated the collection and transported it to Paris, where the paintings were inventoried.

Cornelis Beelt, Interior of a Blacksmith’s Forge, oil on panel, stolen from the Führerbau, not restituted, B323/1037, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz.

The Louvre museum exercised a right of preemption on 49 paintings, while Vichy and Nazi agents were able to secure more than 22 paintings for their own enjoyment. Hitler’s Linz Museum Project acquired the rest of the collection (262 paintings). The paintings were transferred to the Führerbau in Munich from where they were stolen by unknown individuals on April 30, 1945. US forces liberated Munich on the following day, May 1, 1945.

More than 150 paintings are still unaccounted for.

EUROPEAN DIMENSION OF THE PROJECT

The Jewish community played an important role throughout Europe and contributed to the vibrancy of European culture which the Nazi era (1933-1945) aimed to root out and destroy. As a result, Jewish art dealers, art connoisseurs, art collectors, and artists, were persecuted, interned, and, in many cases, deported and killed, while millions of art objects were displaced across the European continent and beyond.

The European nature of the project and its interdisciplinary aspirations are highly relevant to the EU’s enduring support of culture, education and cultural heritage, including the preventing of illicit trafficking of cultural property and fighting antisemitism. In developing the database, the Pilot Project will cooperate closely with the existing network of the JDCRP of some 16 governmental and heritage institutions – archives, museums, libraries, art history institutes – in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and the United States, as well as extend this network.

It is anticipated that by the end of the Pilot Project in 2021, archival-based information on plundered artworks and other cultural objects will begin to fill the database.

The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project expresses its gratitude to the European Union for supporting the Pilot Project. The founding of the JDCRP is linked to the greatest theft of cultural property in history and the many scattered archives storing information on the displacement of these objects. The central database called for by the Washington Principles should now become a reality due to advances in technology and the many good projects that have been done to date.

PILOT PROJECT PRINCIPAL STAFF AND ADVISORY GROUPS

Avishag Ben-Yosef
Project Manager, JDCRP Pilot Project

Marc Masurovsky
Academic Director, JDCRP Pilot Project

We created three advisory groups for the purpose of guiding us on key aspects of the Pilot Project to ensure that the highest professional and ethical standards are upheld throughout the life of the Pilot Project and to guarantee its successful completion.

ARCHIVE ADVISORY GROUP

Marisa Bourgoin
Head of Reference Services, AAA, Smithsonian, U.S.

Sebastien Chauffour
Conservateur chargé des archives de la Récuperation artistique, direction des archives du ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, France

Peggy Frankston
Independent Archival Researcher, France

Dr. Stefanie Jost
Archive Director, Bundesarchiv, Germany

Dr. Clothilde Roullier
Archives Nationales, Ministère de la Culture, France

Filip Strubbe
Archivist, Archives générales du Royaume, Archives de l’État en Belgique

David Zivie
Chef de la Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945, Ministère de la Culture, France

Representative of the Expertise Center Restitution, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Netherlands

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY GROUP

Andrew S. DeJesse
Director, Collective Heritage Lab, U.S.

Michael Haley Goldman
Director of the Future projects, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Dr. Stephan Klingen
Leiter der Photothek, Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Germany

Michael Levy
Director, Digital Assets Management and Preservation, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Dr. Léa Saint-Raymond
École normale supérieure, France

Dr. Sandra van Ginhoven
Head, Collecting and Provenance, Getty Research Institute, U.S.

Reinier van ‘t Zelfde
Information Architect, RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History

Dr. Ruth von dem Bussche
Independent Researcher, Germany

Mag. Leonhard Weidinger
Provenance Researcher, Austria

Representative of the Expertise Center Restitution, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Netherlands

ART HISTORY, PROVENANCE RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS ADVISORY GROUP

Lamia Arnaout-Le Garrec
Fonctionnaire à la retraite du Ministère de l’Intérieur, direction de la Police Judiciaire, service Office Central de lutte contre le trafic des Biens Culturels, spécialiste de la collection Schloss, France

PD Dr. Christian Fuhrmeister
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Germany

Dr. Willi Korte
JD, Independent Senior Provenance Researcher, U.S.

Dr. Carolin Lange
Senior Provenance Researcher, Landesstelle für die nichtstaatlichen Museen in Bayern, Germany; Board Member, Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e.V.

Nathalie Neumann
Provenance Researcher, Germany/France

Judith Niessen
Head of Collections, RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History

Alain Prévet
Chargé de recherche, Mission de recherche et de restitution des biens culturels spoliés entre 1933 et 1945, Ministère de la Culture, France

Dr. Victoria Reed
Sadler Curator for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, U.S.

Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother
Lichtenberg-Professor for Provenance Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Leuphana University, Germany

Representative of the Expertise Center Restitution, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The Netherlands



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