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| James Palmer |
To their credit, many of these founders acted philanthropically, prioritizing public access to art over private gain; as such, they established the Met as a free, non-profit “public trust” to educate Americans, donating personal collections without seeking a personal profit. There were some exceptions to the adoption of this generally selfless effort, which were first observed with the actions of Luigi Palma di Cesnola, the Met’s first director (1870-1904), who was accused of exaggerating or fabricating provenances for looted Cypriot artifacts he collected and sold to the Met, leading to internal probes, of which he was ultimately “cleared.”
Photo of Haystacks, Morning, Éragny, courtesy of author
In his memoirs and interviews, Hoving appeared to downplay or justify acquiring art with questionable provenance, framing such illegal activity as a competitive necessity. For example, in his 1993 memoir Making the Mummies Dance, Hoving admitted suspecting that the Euphronios krater (purchased for $1 million in 1972) had been looted from an Italian tomb but pursued it anyway, later calling it his “hot pot” with relish. He also bragged about his European buying trips: “My address book of dealers and private collectors, smugglers and fixers, agents, runners and the peculiar assortment of art hangers-on was longer than anyone else’s in the field,” suggesting that such networks were standard for elite curators.
Similarly, in his book King of the Confessors (1981), Hoving described in detail several secret extractions, such as the smuggling of a Romanesque relief from Italy, revelling in the adventure without expressing any regret.
Perhaps the words and deeds of Hoving are not that surprising when one considers the comments of his predecessor, Théodore Rousseau, who played a very important role in the development of the Met’s organizational culture as its curator from 1946 until he passed away in 1973. In an Aug. 28, 1948, article in The New Yorker, Rousseau stated, “I think it’s absurd to let the Germans have paintings the Nazi bigwigs got, often through forced sales, from all over Europe. Some of them ought to come here.” He added, “I don’t mean especially to the Metropolitan, which is fairly well off for paintings, but to museums in the West, which aren’t.” Effectively, what Rousseau was saying was that the looted artworks of Holocaust victims should be kept in American museums as opposed to in German museums, paying no attention at all to the moral and legal obligation of returning stolen property to the families of Holocaust victims!
Given Rousseau’s comments and his background of having been a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, and also an art expert and a Monuments Man, one wonders if he ignored all of the many red flags and facts associated with Van Gogh’s Olive Harvest painting, when he agreed to both its acquisition in 1956 and later to its alleged secret sale in 1972. Did these actions and those of the Met lead to the present lawsuit against the Met by the heirs of Hedwig Stern?
Perhaps bearing in mind both the words of Rousseau and the deeds of Hoving, one can quickly understand the perspective of Philippe de Montebello, the Met director from 1978 to 2008, who also made statements that appeared to defend retaining art with “incomplete provenance,” appearing to argue that museums served a higher public good, which somehow trumped the moral and legal obligations to return stolen property to its true owners.
Unsurprisingly, in a 1999 congressional hearing on Nazi-looted art, Montebello emphasized the notion of proactive research but downplayed media claims of “looted” works being in Met collections and instead insisted that many artworks with gaps in provenance had been restituted legally before their donation to the Met. In this portion of Montebello’s address, he appears to try to differentiate the moral obligations of a typical museum, like the Met, from countries in Europe:
“One cannot equate the works of art seized by the Nazis and later deposited by the Allies with the governments of, among others, Austria, France or the Netherlands, and the handful of once-looted works that have turned up, or may yet turn up, in American museums. American museums did not participate in the plunder of Jewish collections in Europe during the Nazi era, nor were works, recovered but unclaimed, deposited with them at the end of the war.… There is no similarity between works of art in American museums and the hidden assets in European banks and insurance companies. American museums openly display their collections and make them available to a wide public; they publish them in print and now also in the electronic media.”
Here, it appears that Montebello tries to differentiate the looted artworks that were sent by the Allies to countries in Europe from the looted artworks that are or may later end up in American museums! Isn’t looted property simply looted property, which needs to be returned, whether it was transferred by the Allies in the hopes of finding the original owners or whether it was otherwise acquired and donated to a museum?
Montebello went further by defending the Met’s purchase of items like the Euphronios krater, notwithstanding the Hoving-era issues outlined above, and actually argued in 2006 that the “black market” preserved artifacts better than the countries of their origin, and suggested that such stolen items were better off in museums where people could learn from them than returned to their owners.
Although the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and federal investigators from Homeland Security also examined the Met’s actions and exposed widespread problems, perhaps the museum will ultimately recognize the rights of the family of Max Braunthal who recently claimed the return of their looted Pissarro painting, titled Haystacks, Morning, Éragny, which was sold in Paris while the country was occupied by the Nazis. At this time, Braunthal had been cut off from virtually all of his assets and his income, during a period of rapid inflation in France, where he found himself in dire circumstances and desperate to flee. For the Braunthal family, their only hope is a formal legal claim, which was just recently filed in France, and the hope that one day, in the not-too-distant future, the organizational culture of the Met will change to one with far greater compassion and understanding.
James Palmer established Mondex Corporation in 1993. Driven to do work of meaning, in 1998, encouraged by the Washington Principles, James worked to develop Mondex’s expertise to include the restitution of looted art and other cultural property. Since then, Mondex has cooperated with ministries of culture in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Poland to help shape their restitution policies. James completed his studies at the Canadian universities of York, Laurentian and Western, as well as the University of Nice in France and Heriot-Watt University in Scotland. He holds an honours BA and an MBA, and currently acts as a consultant for Mondex. The author would like to thank Dr. Waldemar de Boer for his contribution to this article.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the author’s firm, its clients, Law360 Canada, LexisNexis Canada or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
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