Twenty-five years have passed since the Washington Conference on Holocaust era assets.
***
Yet there is still no central database of museum artworks with their provenances. Some museums - big museums, university art museums - still publish no provenance at all.
Projects are announced, appear, disappear, each separate. There is no central tracking of Nazi era provenance gaps. The scale is enormous. The number of artworks with unclear ownership history for the Nazi era remains extremely high.
Given the enormity of the task, this post looks at the situation in museums for a single artist: Picasso.
(update ongoing)
| Collection | Before 1945 | Image? | Provenance? | Nazi-era Gaps? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MoMA | 659 | yes | sometimes | yes |
| NGA | 258 | yes | yes | yes |
| Pompidou | 59 | yes | no | yes |
| Musée Picasso | 4000+ all dates | yes | no | unknown |
| Albertina | 40 | yes | no | yes |
| Hermitage | 36 | yes | no | yes |
| Fondation Beyeler | 22 | yes | yes | yes |
| Museums in Denmark | 133 | yes | yes | yes |
| UK Collections Trust | 16 | no | yes | yes |
| Pinakothek (Munich) | 14 | no | no | yes |
| Kunstmuseum Basel | 66 | yes | NO | yes |
| Kunstmuseum Bern | 9 -on display or Gurlitt | yes | yes - PDF | yes |
| Metropolitan Museum | 56 | yes | yes | yes |
| MFA | 29 | yes | yes | yes |
| DIA | 21 | NO | yes | yes |
| Harvard Art Museums | 20 | yes | yes | yes-11 |
| Yale Art | 35 | yes | yes | yes |
| Cleveland | 19 | yes | yes | yes |
| Princeton Museum | 6 | yes | NO | yes |
| Emil Bührle Collection | 5 | yes | yes | yes |
| Musée d'Orsay | 1 | yes | yes | yes |
| Rose Art Museum | 4 | yes | no | yes |
Links:
Museum of Modern Art - MoMa (USA)
Query for Picasso (all) 1246 artworks all dates
(659 artworks is an estimation, because the query picks up some other artists as well)
NGA (USA):
MFA Boston (USA)
UK Collections Trust:
Pinakothek (Munich)
Museums in Denmark
Rose Art Museum (USA)
* no provenance information *