Dec 17, 2018

Museums: Interactive Map with Wikidata


Wikidata query to visualize all the museums in the world
Map of museums in the world from Wikidata Query


 Link to interactive Map of Museums


Here is the Wikdata Query (from example queries)

#Locations of museums
#defaultView:Map
SELECT ?museumDescription ?website ?coord WHERE {
  ?museum (wdt:P31/wdt:P279*) wd:Q33506.
  ?museum wdt:P625 ?coord.
  OPTIONAL { ?museum wdt:P856 ?website. }
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "en,de". }

Dec 5, 2018

Provenance dataset: Molyneux in NGA NEPIP

In this post we gather together a small subset of artworks that mention Molyneux in the provenance. 

The artworks selected are those that the National Gallery of Art listed on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal and which also contain Molyneux in the provenance
Why is the mention of Molyneux in the provenance of an artwork noteworthy?
A Washington Post article published twenty years ago in 2000 explains the role of Molyneux in supplying one of the NGA's most important art collectors and benefactors, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, with French paintings immediately after WWII, and Molyneux's connection to a Nazi art looting Red Flag Name, Paul Petrides. 

The Bruce collection of small French impressionists provides a good example of less than rigorous screening policies. She bought the paintings in 1955 from a dashing Anglo-French fashion designer named Edward Molyneux. Molyneux, who built up his collection in the immediate postwar period, provided little information about how he had come into possession of the paintings.

In purchasing the paintings, Bruce acted on the advice of the then-curator of the National Gallery, John Walker, and it was clearly understood that the collection would end up in the gallery after her death. Since Molyneux did not die until 1965, it would have been a relatively simple matter to have asked him about the provenance. But gallery officials did not get around to making inquiries until the early '70s.


While there is no reason to suspect Molyneux of knowingly buying looted art, at least some of the paintings came from a Paris dealer named Paul Petrides, who actively collaborated with Nazi art looters, according to U.S. Army files. In a letter dated December 1977, Petrides described Molyneux as "a faithful client who bought a lot of paintings from me."

Nov 24, 2018

Otto Wittmann's curious story

Victoria Dubourg by DEGAS at the Toledo Museum of Art
1963.45  http://emuseum.toledomuseum.org/objects/55168



Otto Wittmann, director of the Toledo Museum of Art from 1959 to 1977,  tells the "strange story" of how paintings by Degas and Cézanne came to Toledo in his interview "The museum in the creation of community".


According to the website of the Toledo Museum of Art, William Levis donated one Degas and one Cézanne to the Museum. Could these be the same Degas and Cézanne Otto Wittmann says were loaned to the National Gallery of Art by art dealers during World War II?
https://archive.org/details/museumincreation00witt/page/n7
see: Otto Wittmann by Wittmann, Otto, 1911-2001, interviewee; Cándida Smith, Richard, interviewer; Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, compiler; J. Paul Getty Trust, publisher
***

WITTMANN: "I'll tell you one strange story about the National Gallery..."

Nov 19, 2018

Raphaël Gérard

Gurlitt: Status Report

An Art Dealer in Nazi Germany

What does it mean to find the name Raphaël Gérard in a provenance?


1. The art dealer Raphaël Gérard appears in the provenance of an astonishing number of artworks in the Gurlitt: Status Report An Art Dealer in Nazi Germany expo in Berlin. This close collaboration with Gurlitt suggests that more research would be useful.

© Gurlitt Provenance Research Project Object record excerpt for Lost Art ID: 532973 

Gustave Courbet
Portrait of a woman (Portait of the Artist’s Sister Juliette?)

Provenance:
(…)
By latest 28 April 1944: Raphaël Gerard, Paris (per Gurlitt Papers)
After September 1953: Hildebrand Gurlitt, Dusseldorf (per Gurlitt Papers)
Thence by descent to Cornelius Gurlitt, Munich/Salzburg

From 6 May 2014: Estate of Cornelius Gurlitt

© Gurlitt Provenance Research Project Object record excerpt for Lost Art ID: 533086

Provenance:
(…)
By latest 28 April 1944: Raphaël Gerard, Paris (per Gurlitt Papers)
After September 1953: Hildebrand Gurlitt, Dusseldorf (per Gurlitt Papers)
Thence by descent to Cornelius Gurlitt, Munich/Salzburg
From 6 May 2014: Estate of Cornelius Gurlitt


2. The art dealer Raphaël Gérard is known to have dealt in "confiscated pictures" and to have used aliases.

https://www.fold3.com/image/269882894 

Raphael Gérard: “closely connected with German looting in France” “used the names HERMSEN and SCHEOLLER” NARA M1946. denazification orders, custody receipts, property cards, Jewish restitution claim records, and other records.  - NARA/Fold3 

Nov 18, 2018

Allen Loebl


"LOEBL was LOHSE's adviser and intermediary in a substantial number of transactions, and "spotted" pictures for him" 
https://www.dfs.ny.gov/consumer/holocaust/history_art_looting_restitution/The%20Allies/OSS%20and%20the%20ALIU/ALIU%20Reports/bruno_lohse.pdf


Who Was Allen Loebl? (Also: Ali Loebl) What was his role at Galerie Kleinberger in Paris? What was his relationship with Harry G. Sperling at F. Kleinberger & Co. in New York? What were his relations with the Nazi and SS ERR art looter Bruno Lohse? Why did he appear so many times on the Art Looting Investigation Unit Red Flag list?