Modern art seized by Nazis and sold through Curt Valentin: Where are they today?

Nazi Looted Art Research, focus on Curt Valentin and the sale of modern art, classified by Nazis as "Degenerate" and seized for resale to finance the Nazi war effort

Location of "Degenerate Art" seized by Nazis and sold by Curt Valentin (where it it known)

New York, Museum of Modern Art	16
Privatbesitz	12
St. Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum	5
Detroit, Institute of Arts	5
USA, Privatbesitz	4
Washington, National Gallery of Art	3
Philadelphia, Museum of Art	3
Hannover, Sprengel Museum	3
Essen, Museum Folkwang	3
Washington, Smithsonian Institution	2
Providence, Rhode Island School of Design	2
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum	2
Cambridge/MA, Fogg Art Museum	2
Cambridge/MA, Busch-Reisinger Museum - Harvard University Art Museums	2
Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie	2
Würzburg, Sammlung Hermann Gerlinger	1
Winterthur, Kunstmuseum	1
Washington, Library of Congress	1
Washington, International Gallery of Art	1
Sydney, Art Gallery New South Wales	1
Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie	1
Schweiz, Privatbesitz	1
Sammlung Rolf Horn	1
Oberlin, Allen Memorial Art Museum	1
New York, Weintraub Gallery	1
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art	1
New York, Brooklyn Museum	1
Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art	1
Miyazaki, Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum	1
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center	1
Minneapolis, Institute of Arts	1
Michigan, Slg. Adolph Alfred Taubmann	1
Mailand, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta	1
Madrid, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza	1
London, Sammlung Goodwin	1
Locarno, Museo Civico e Archeologico Castello Visconteo	1
Kunsthandel	1
Köln, Kunstmuseum des Erzbistums Köln	1
Köln, Kunsthaus Lempertz	1
Kansas City, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art	1
Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle	1
Hagen, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum	1
Dresden, Skulpturensammlung	1
Cleveland, The Cleveland Museum of Art	1
Chicago, The Art Institute	1
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts	1
Bern, Galerie Kornfeld und Cie.	1
Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Museum Berggruen	1
Berlin, Galerie Michael Haas	1
Bergen, Kunstmuseum, Stenersen's Collection	1

 raw data source: Beschlagnahmeinventar "Entartete Kunst", "Degenerate Art" Research Center, FU Berlin; filtered for "Curt Valentin" and Location not blank or "Unbekannt"

http://emuseum.campus.fu-berlin.de/eMuseumPlus?service=RedirectService&sp=Scollection&sp=SfieldValue&sp=0&sp=5&sp=3&sp=SdetailList&sp=0&sp=Sdetail&sp=2&sp=F

See also: Buchholz and Valentin in Provenance Texts in American Museums

Looted antiquities and false provenances

Looted Art Newsflash 26 May 2022 Former Louvre Director Jean-Luc Martinez Has Been Charged With Money Laundering Over Ties to Alleged Antiquities Trafficking Ring Jo Lawson-Tancred Artnet News

Looted Art Newsflash 25 May 2022 Jean-Luc Martinez, ancien patron du Louvre, mis en examen dans une affaire de trafic d’antiquités Il est soupçonné de blanchiment et complicité d’escroquerie en bande organisée. En cause, une stèle gravée au nom de Toutânkhamon exposée au Louvre Abu Dhabi, qui pourrait avoir été pillée. Par Roxana Azimi Le Monde

Alfred Flechtheim: Das Soldatenbad by Kirchner

Das Soldatenbad by Kirchner is one of the many paintings Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim lost due to Nazi persecution which targeted him and forced the Aryanization of his art gallery in 1933.

Curt Valentin in provenances at the Harvard Art Museums

- The Persistent Crime of Nazi-Looted Art, by Sophie Gilbert, in The AtlanticLooted Art

The director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr. used art dealer Curt Valentin as an intermediary to secretly purchase artworks confiscated by Nazis from German museums. What else did Barr and other American museums directors purchase through Valentin?

In this next series of posts, we will look at the provenances of artworks that mention Curt Valentin. 

An interesting exercise for young art historians and provenances researchers is to examine each provenance with the questions: 

1) Who owned this artwork before Curt Valentin? 

2) Are there provenance gaps for the years 1933-1945?

3) What share of artworks that mention Curt Valentin in the provenance lack information about sellers, dates and places for the Nazi years? (0-25%; 26-50%; 51%-75%; 76%-100%).

4) What possible explanations might there be for the observations in 3)?

5) What actions does this suggest?

1. Mentions of Curt Valentin in the provenances of artworks at the Harvard Art Museums

See  Valentin Harvard Art Museums Provenance



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for more information on Curt Valentin's role in bringing European art into American museums, see:

MoMA’s Problematic Provenances by William D. Cohan published November 17, 2011 by Artnews

DATASET MOMA Provenance Research Project (PRP) artworks

Dataset name: Enhanced MoMA PRP

Description: This enhanced Provenance dataset has been constructed from  information available on the public internet site of the Museum of Modern Art MoMA. It merges the list of artworks on the MoMa Provenance Research Project page with provenance texts published on the MoMA's detailed item pages. It is intended to facilitate research into Holocaust-era provenance for scholars, art historians and families. 



Original data sources that were merged to create new dataset:

• Moma.org Provenance Research Project (PRP)
• Provenance texts for each artwork on MoMa.org based on the url in the MoMA PRP Excel file 

Format: Google Sheet

URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR2Xl_gm3I8l0uHhxklJW4aZNYwEV5reEa-7JbKdIk93Li0iqtm1OkWBUY_6KkCE3dOwiKFwtnds_jx/pubhtml

Download: CSV


Contents:
1. PRP Artworks with provenance 
(Artist,Title,Date,Medium,Dimensions,URL,Acc_Number,Department,Provenance,Publisher of Provenance,Author of Provenance)
2. About this file
3. Artists Count (pivot table with number of artworks by artists)
4. Department (pivot table with number of artworks by department)
5. Provenance text contains word "private" (pivot table with filter)
6. Provenance text contains name "Valentin" (pivot table with filter)
7. Provenance text contains the word "probably" (pivot table with filter)

Publisher: OAD

Date of Publication: October 31, 2019

Example of content: Provenance text contains word "private"

Selection of artworks listed on the MoMA Provenance Research Project that contain the word "private" in the provenance text published on the museum website 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR2Xl_gm3I8l0uHhxklJW4aZNYwEV5reEa-7JbKdIk93Li0iqtm1OkWBUY_6KkCE3dOwiKFwtnds_jx/pubhtml