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| Swiss museum accepts Nazi-era art trove | Swiss museum accepts Nazi-era art trove |
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| BERLIN — A Swiss museum Monday accepted a priceless bequest by the late son of a Nazi-era art dealer, providing a home for long-hidden works by renown masters while also pledging to set a new standard for vetting art looted during World War II. | |
| The decision by the Museum of Fine Arts Bern — officially known as the Kunstmuseum Bern — marks a major step toward resolving the future of one of the most significant art hoards uncovered in recent memory. News of the collection stunned the art world in late 2013, after the German media reported that tax authorities in Bavaria had recovered lost works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix and other masters more than a year earlier in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt. | The decision by the Museum of Fine Arts Bern — officially known as the Kunstmuseum Bern — marks a major step toward resolving the future of one of the most significant art hoards uncovered in recent memory. News of the collection stunned the art world in late 2013, after the German media reported that tax authorities in Bavaria had recovered lost works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Otto Dix and other masters more than a year earlier in the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt. |
| Gurlitt died in May at age 81. He was the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a dealer who had worked with the Nazis to liquidate art, much of which had been seized or bought at fire-sale prices. The younger Gurlitt left the works to the museum in Bern for reasons that remain unclear. | Gurlitt died in May at age 81. He was the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a dealer who had worked with the Nazis to liquidate art, much of which had been seized or bought at fire-sale prices. The younger Gurlitt left the works to the museum in Bern for reasons that remain unclear. |
| Christoph Schäublin, president of the museum’s board, said Monday that the institution had thought long and hard before accepting the donation. It finally did so only after striking a rare deal with the German government, which simultaneously announced that it would cover the cost of investigating ownership histories and purchase details of the works. | |
| The museum said it would abide by the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which lay out guidelines for assessing ownership of and making restitution for artwork. Any pieces found to have been wrested wrongly from Jewish hands, officials said, would be returned to their heirs. | |
| In a significant move, the German government Monday published the war-era sales records and business documents of Hildebrand Gurlitt online, a move that attorneys of heirs have been clamoring for to aid their clients’ claims. | |
| Three pieces in the collection — by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann and Carl Spitzweg — have been determined to be stolen and will be returned to their rightful heirs, officials said Monday. | |
| “We want to live up to our special German responsibility to the victims of the Nazi dictatorship, not only in legal, but also in moral terms,” German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said. | “We want to live up to our special German responsibility to the victims of the Nazi dictatorship, not only in legal, but also in moral terms,” German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said. |
| There are no “feelings of triumph” related to the receipt of the collection, Schäublin said. That, he added, would be “utterly inappropriate, considering the history the collection is burdened with.” | |
| Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Jewish Claims Conference, said he welcomed the deal, calling the pledge to conduct provenance research on the works “extremely important.” | Greg Schneider, executive vice president of the Jewish Claims Conference, said he welcomed the deal, calling the pledge to conduct provenance research on the works “extremely important.” |
| He said he hopes the deal will be a model for how other museums should deal with potential looted art. | He said he hopes the deal will be a model for how other museums should deal with potential looted art. |
| “But,” he said, “what matters now is the implementation, what happens next.” Although officials said Monday that they will work with transparency and speed, the process could be slowed. A cousin of Cornelius Gurlitt said last week that she plans to file an inheritance claim for the art, and it remains to be seen just how seriously German courts would take such a claim. A team of experts is combing through a portion of the works found in Gurlitt’s apartment in Munich, as well as a smaller cache found in his apartment in Salzburg, Austria. Many works in the collection are believed to have been seized or forcibly acquired by the Nazis under their campaign against so-called degenerate art — a term used to encapsulate a host of modern masters as well as artists with Jewish heritage. Others may have been acquired by the elder Gurlitt to form part of the collection in Adolf Hitler’s never realized dream of building a Führermuseum. Many such works were seized from other museums during the war, as well as from private owners. On Monday, the German government said it had struck a deal with the Kunstmuseum to give first preference for lending works to the museums that originally housed them. | |
| Stephanie Kirchner contributed to this report. | Stephanie Kirchner contributed to this report. |