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July 12, 1997

- The Lost Museum, the Nazi conspiracy to steal the world's greatest works of art.
- Family in fight for Ł300m 'war loot'
- House Rejects Block Grant Funding For Arts
- Italy Contests University Donation

The Lost Museum, the Nazi conspiracy to steal the world's greatest works of art.
The Lost Museum by Hector Feliciano. Published by Basic Books (Harper Collins Publishers), 1997, ISBN 0-465-04194-9
From the dustjacket:
"A dramatic blend of WW II narrative, art history, and investigative journalism revealing the details of a shocking international conspiracy......."
This books contains the story of the Nazis taking over 20,000 paintings, sculptures, and drawings from France. A 278pp clothbound, octavo, illustrated book. Price in USD: 27.50 (Canadian 39.00).
The book is illustrated with private family pictures many of which have never been published before and is focused on the private collections of five families: Rothschild, Rosenberg, Bernheim-Jeune, David-Weill, and Schloss. It traces the art works as they passed through the hands of top German officials, unscrupulous art dealers, and unwitting auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's. Many works were returned to the owners, but thousands disappeared (as well as the owners....). Hector Feliciano spent more than seven years tracking down the story of this nazi pillaging. As all of you know the French government, after over fifty years (!!), exhibited many of the stolen artworks in several museums past spring.
The book by Feliciano seems to belong in every art security reference library. Nobody will be able to deny knowledge about art looting in wartime in future (just wait and see what we will learn about the looting of art in the former Yugoslavia....)
Ton Cremers
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Family in fight for Ł300m 'war loot'
By Barbie Dutter
(Telegraph)

THE descendants of one of Holland's greatest art collectors have lodged a legal claim with the Dutch government for the return of 3,000 Old Master drawings and paintings estimated to be worth up to Ł300 million.
The Koenigs collection was broken up and sold at a fraction of its value during the Second World War, with many of the paintings ending up in the private art collections of Hitler and Goering. Most of the works were handed back to Holland after the war but were not returned to the family of Franz Koenigs, a banker who amassed the collection between 1918 and 1939.
Christine Koenigs, Mr Koenigs' granddaughter, began the family's action this week after spending three years untangling the collection's complex history using the Public Record Office in London, the National Archives in Washington and German war records in Berlin. She is convinced that the family are the rightful owners, claiming that the works were sold illegally and under duress during the war.
Miss Koenigs, 44, believes that the Nazis murdered her grandfather by throwing him under a train at Cologne station in 1941. She said last night from her home in Amsterdam that her quest to retrieve the Koenigs collection was an attempt to fight an injustice, on behalf of her grandfather and his descendants.
"Franz Koenigs was very badly wronged, but what happened under wartime pressure is in some ways forgivable. What is unforgivable is what happened after the war - basically, the lack of proper restitution. "The collection was in a sense confiscated by the Netherlands without even considering the possibility that the Koenigs heirs had a rightful claim."
She has now submitted the family's claim to the Inspectorate of Cultural Property, part of the Dutch government's Ministry for Education, Culture and Science in The Hague, which will now conduct an investigation.
The collection, which comprises 47 paintings - including 20 by Rubens and four by Hieronymus Bosch - and some 3,000 drawings, including works by Holbein, Rembrandt, Canaletto, Dürer, Tiepolo and Van Dyck, was loaned in 1935 by Mr Koenigs, a German-born banker who became a naturalised Dutchman, to the Museum Boymans in Rotterdam.
But Mr Koenigs owed 2.2 million Dutch guilders to a German Jewish banker, Siegfried Kramarsky, with the collection acting as security on the loan.In 1939, when Holland was under threat of Nazi invasion, Mr Kramarsky was forced to call in the loan, and seized the drawings and paintings as payment, Miss Koenigs said.
After a series of transactions, 19 paintings were sold to Goering and 12 to Hitler for less than a fifth of their value. They were subsequently returned to the Museum Boymans. But 526 Old Master drawings acquired by Hitler were seized by the Russians and taken to Moscow. More than 300 are in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, while 180 are unaccounted for.
Miss Koenigs said other paintings were scattered among Dutch museums, some were put in storage by the Dutch government, and three by Rubens are at the Courtauld Institute, London. Miss Koenigs said the family's claim was that the transactions took place under duress and the works sold for a fraction of their value.
"My grandfather loved his collection and worked hard getting it together. The fact that it was seized and sold at a ridiculous price was the most terrible thing for him."
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House Rejects Block Grant Funding For Arts
(adds quotes from NEA chairwoman) By Vicki Allen

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The House Friday rejected a plan to continue federal funding for the arts through grants to states and school districts, one day after lawmakers moved to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts.
The House voted 271-155 against a compromise offered by House Republicans that would have replaced the NEA with a system of $80 million in block grants administered mostly by the Education Department.
The deal was foiled by Democrats and a number of moderate Republicans who refused to vote for a scheme that would involve shutting down the NEA, and by many conservative Republicans who balked at continuing any federal arts funding.
Despite House moves to close the NEA, advocates of the agency -- which distributes grants to community orchestras, theater groups, filmmakers, sculptors, and other artists -- said they expected it would be saved by the Senate and the White House.
``On the Senate side, we're a lot more optimistic that the NEA will be retained,'' Elliot Mincberg, vice president of the People for the American Way Action Fund, said.
On a cliffhanger vote of 217-216 Thursday, the House cleared the way for Friday's action on the block grant proposal. Funding for the NEA is contained in a $13 billion spending bill for the Interior Department and related agencies.
By defeating the block grant plan, the House left intact provisions in the original bill that would slash NEA's funding to $10 million, just enough to close the agency, with no alternative arts support.
NEA Chairwoman Jane Alexander told Reuters there might be another effort to revive the NEA before the House votes next week on the overall spending bill.
``I think it would be extremely regrettable if this House of Representatives were to go down in history as zeroing out the NEA. I think it would be a dark stain on an otherwise fine body,'' she said.
But several House sources said the NEA issue was unlikely to resurface on the House floor before then.
Still, because Thursday's vote was so close and because of expected support in the Senate, Mincberg and several House Democrats said they were optimistic the final bill to emerge from Congress would preserve the agency.
The Clinton administration has threatened to veto the overall spending bill if the final version sent to the White House shuts off funding for the NEA.
``The Senate no doubt has stronger support for the arts than the House does,'' an aide to a Democratic senator said, but she said it may be a struggle to keep next year's NEA funding at the current $100 million.
House Democrats urged defeat of the GOP block grant plan to better position themselves to carry their fight to the Senate to keep the NEA.
Wisconsin Democrat David Obey called the block grant plan ''nothing but a device by which you accomplish the assassination of the National Endowment for the Arts.''
But Rep. Vernon Ehlers, a Michigan Republican who sponsored the block grants plan, said continuing money for arts was more important than maintaining the NEA.
``The NEA has proved to be a lightning rod. It has attracted all types of criticism because they have on occasion given money for art which is profane or obscene or sacrilegious,'' Ehlers said.
California Republican Sonny Bono, who launched his public career singing with his then-wife Cher, said: ``I have been in the arts for 30 years. That has been my occupation. I know of no one in 30 years in the arts who has been assisted by the NEA. So I don't see where the NEA is this amazing contribution to mankind and has brought all these artists forward.''
House Speaker Newt Gingrich also made an unusual floor statement to support the block grants, saying they were a way ''to take most of the argument, most of the controversy, most of the irritation out of the system, and allow us to focus instead on how do we help the local symphony, how do we help the local ballet, how do we help the local art museum...''
Reuters/Variety
REUTER@ Reut19:26 07-11-97
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Italy Contests University Donation
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
Associated Press Writer

FLORENCE, Italy (AP) The story involves a priceless art collection, a regal Tuscan villa, an alleged love affair and the exhumation of a long-buried body.
The ingredients seem right off the pages of an Italian novel.
Instead they are the spice of a lawsuit that has cast a shadow over what was described as the largest gift ever to an American university.
When writer Sir Harold Acton died at age 89 in 1994, New York University announced he had bequeathed his 57-acre estate, his art collection and his immense library to the university.
NYU had been expecting the gift, and planned to use it to expand its overseas program. What it didn't know was that an Italian woman, Liana Beacci, would file suit, claiming she was entitled to a share of the estate.
Her claim? That she was the illegitimate daughter of Sir Harold's father, art collector Sir Arthur Acton, who died in 1953.
That would make her the half-sister of Sir Harold.
Under Italian law, she could be entitled to as much as 25 percent of the estate if her claim is upheld.
But after two years of legal proceedings, the estate just won a victory. Last month, Italy's highest appeals court overturned a verdict that would have opened the way for her to pursue her claim.
"This means it will go back for another trial. It could take years to resolve," said Andrea Scavetta, executor of the estate who also represents the interests of NYU.
Miss Beacci's lawyer, Andrea Cecetti, said her 80-year-old client intends to pursue the case and that a new trial will probably be held before the end of the year. Her aim is to convince the court that there is reason to open the grave of Sir Arthur and test whether his DNA matches hers.
There is a lot at stake and plenty of history in the background.
La Pietra, the Acton estate, includes five villas overlooking Florence and is surrounded by cypress and pine trees. The libraries include thousands of volumes on art, literature, music and history. The artworks include 15th-century Flemish tapestries woven for the Medicis and a Donatello relief.
At La Pietra, Sir Harold hosted members of the British royal family, such leaders as Winston Churchill and such writers as D. H. Lawrence and Graham Greene.
Miss Beacci claims she is the product of a love affair between Sir Arthur and an Italian woman who was working as his secretary in the 1890s and early 1900s. It was a time when British nobility put down roots in the hill country of Tuscany, cradle of the Italian renaissance.
NYU is going ahead with its plans for La Pietra, with about 60 students at any one time now using its facilities.
La Pietra is the "prime nerve center of our study abroad program," said NYU spokesman John Beckman.
Scavetta, the estate's lawyer, said he's confident that NYU's interests are protected. One reason, he said, is that Sir Harold's wealth did not come from his father but his mother, an American heiress.
(11 Jul 1997 04:17 EDT)
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