We caught up with Head of Art Management Maria de Peverelli to find out more.
Between 1933 and 1945, tens of thousands of works of art were confiscated from or forcibly sold by Jewish families. A large proportion of these then entered the art market or public collections with no record of previous ownership and were bought in good faith by collectors or institutions well into the mid-1990s.
Today, 77 years after the end of the Second World War, the restitution of Nazi-looted art is a global issue that goes well beyond the individual cases of returning specific art works to a given family. It is a question of finding a way to make amends, acknowledge wrong doings and re-define future interactions among nations and aggrieved parties.
In 1998, the governments of 44 countries agreed the so-called ‘Washington Principles’, released in connection with the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets. This statement of 11 nonbinding principles was designed to support and encourage each country to make the resources available to aid in the identification and registration of Nazi-looted art.
Identification, though, is only the first half of the story. Having identified a work, the next question is how to find a just and fair solution as to who the rightful owner of that artwork might be. It remains one of the art world’s most emotional and controversial topics.
For state institutions, like most of the owners of art in Italy and France, restitution is not in the gift of the boards and directors of museum alone. It is also tied up in the national law which varies from country to country. For example, in February this year, France returned 15 works of art from various museums including the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre. This required that a bill be passed by the National Assembly which was then subsequently approved by the senate and required to be signed by the president himself.
In the United States, most museums are privately funded and funded without Government involvement. Decisions around how to handle their art collection therefore sit solely with the board and directors. This could be anything from whether or not to investigate an artwork’s provenance or approving a restitution claim. In 2005, the heirs to a work by JMW Turner that was hanging in the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas, requested it’s return. Given the evidence provided by the family, the board agreed, however outcomes such as this are not common. As there is no outside governing body providing guidance on how to handle these issues, the decision is left in the hands of the very institutions that have a vested interest in keeping the works as part of their own collections. This has led to an increasing number of museum restitution cases resulting in litigation.
Cases like this often attract a lot of media attention, especially when the art involved is worth millions of dollars and the artists are well-known. For private collectors, who might have inadvertently acquired Nazi-looted works of art between the 1930-90s, there are ways of doing the fair and just thing, while avoiding public court claims.
One option is to return the requested work to its pre-war owners without asking for any compensation. This is the most straightforward solution, although it often leads to the sale of the work or works in question when the claimants or heirs are multiple.
Another option is to agree to donate the work to a public institution. A thoughtfully written museum label can explain the provenance of the work and share the story of the family who owned it.
A third way to go is to have the value of the work assessed by independent appraisers, then either sell it and split the proceeds according to a prearranged agreement or agree that one party keeps the work or works while the other accepts a percentage in cash for the other.
There are likely still thousands of artworks that are yet to be identified. It is important that we continue to search for Nazi-looted art as a way to not only make right the injustices of the past, but also protect the legacy and story of these artworks and set a precedent for how such cases are handled in the future.
For any questions about restitution, due diligence or collection management, please contact Maria de Peverelli and the Stonehage Fleming Art Management team.