Showing posts with label restitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restitution. Show all posts
Oct 14, 2025
Austrian Advisory Board Decisions
Jul 10, 2024
DATASET: Art Provenances AFTER Restitution of Looted Art
Claims for Nazi-looted art or duress sales sometimes result in restitution or settlement agreements which cause the restituted artwork to be sold at auction.
Below are artworks whose provenance, as published by Christie's auction house, mentions a restitution or settlement agreement with the heir of a victim of Nazi persecution.
These provenance texts provide valuable information to art historians and Holocaust researchers, offering insights into the art market networks that dealt in Holocaust-linked artworks between the time they left the possession of the persecuted Jewish collectors and the time they were restituted.
(original source of information: Christie's auction website)
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Dataset: CSV Download
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May 25, 2024
French government report 2022: The looting of works of art in France during the Occupation, organized, large-scale actions
Below is a translation into English of the following document:
Le pillage des oeuvres d'art en France pendant l'Occupation des actions organisées et de grande envergure
https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/Thematiques/Musees/MNR/Le-pillage-des-aeuvres-d-art-en-France-pendant-l-Occupation.pdf
Dec 14, 2022
Art Provenance Texts as Data: Restitution Histories in Auction Catalogs
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| Adolph Menzel, restituted to the heirs of Walter Westfeld |
Below is a selection of several provenances published online by Sotheby's. Some of the provenance texts indicate that artworks put up for auction had previously been restituted to the families of persecuted collectors.
For the artworks that have been restituted, the provenances - before the restitution - offer clues to how the resale market for Nazi-looted art worked. Through which hands did the artworks pass? Do any names recur?
May 8, 2021
Linz ALMAS
Maria Almas-Dietrich: Nazi art looter
"Art dealer; personal friend of Hitler, and for a time his principal buyer of works of art. One of the most important purchasing agents for Linz. Was under house arrest at Grafing, Bavaria, autumn 1945."
- ALIU 1946 Final Report
Art historians, "Almas" in a provenance text means: dig deep.
The probability of Nazi looting is high.
Below, artworks from the DHM Linz database that contain "Almas" in the provenance.
Apr 3, 2020
Curt Valentin in provenances at the Harvard Art Museums
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| - 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
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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
Dec 9, 2019
Nazi-era Provenance Research and Restitution Status, Albertina Museum Vienna
The Kunstdatenbank provides information about Nazi-era provenance research projects in Austria.
Below is a summary of the status of provenance research for the Albertina Museum, based on the information provided in the Kunstdatenbank in December 2019:source of information analysed in this table:
Kunstdatenbank for Albertina
https://www.kunstdatenbank.at/detail-view-museum/albertina
Albertina, Albertinaplatz 1;1010 Vienna
Additional information provided about the provenance research project at the Albertina Museum by the Kunstdatenbank on its website:
Provenance researcher: Mag.a Julia Eßl
In the Albertina, Maren Gröning carried out provenance research for the period 1938–1960 actively between 1998 and 2000 and as required between 2000 and 2009. During this time, 49 reports regarding 317 works were submitted to the Commission for Provenance Research. Of these, 163 objects were restituted, in addition to a collection of around 3,500 posters (as at October 2009) and the restitution of a further 34 objects was recommended by the Advisory Board pursuant to the Art Restitution Law, Federal Law Gazette 1998/181.
Mag. Julia Eßl and Dr. Pia Schölnberger (until August 2017) have been working as provenance researchers at the Albertina since spring 2011, on behalf of the Commission for Provenance Research. Their task is to build on the research already carried out at an intensified level, by examining all objects which came into the collection between 1933 and the present for their origins and previous owners. In dubious or contentious cases, dossiers are compiled which are subsequently submitted to the Art Restitution Advisory Board, whose task is to advise the Federal Minister of Education, the Arts and Culture on a possible restitution.
Due to the extension of the period to be investigated, the provenance researchers of the Albertina will carry out investigations into the purchases from the German art trade between 1933 and 1938, into all purchases after 1960 and into acquisitions of the library, and a general object autopsy in order to look for indications of provenance on the originals as well as a systematic revision of the entire holdings of the works of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt.
(source: Kunstsdatenbank)
(source: Kunstsdatenbank)
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