MADRID, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Spanish police have recovered a painting by
Adolf Hitler, stolen along with works by two other artists last April,
officials said on Monday.
``Woman in Blue,'' a work by the frustrated artist-turned Nazi
leader, was one of three paintings valued at a total of four million
pesetas ($26,315).
``Hitler's painting was the one worth most,'' said a spokeswoman for
Valencia police. ``It's a very nice picture.''
The paintings had been stolen from inside a parked van belonging to a
Malaga art gallery.
Another Hitler painting, a watercolour of Vienna, fetched just 3,000
pounds ($4,800) at auction last October. The auctioneer said it was
recognisable as a Hitler work because the quality was so poor.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.
Our security section mainly deals with threat & risk analysis, and
security in the financial sector. However, one of our current
buildings incorporates a museum. What we would like to know is what
the current practices are for security within museums, and what
relevant documents there are that we should try to obtain copies of.
I'd appreciate your help in this matter.
thanks,
Alistair McGill
Ove Arup & Partners
London
The recent withdrawal of paintings from touring exhibitions for
criminal investigation has prompted some of the world's leading museum
directors to form a task force to look into the ownership of art works
confiscated by the Nazis. Francine Cunningham reports When the Pierre
Bonnard retrospective moved from London to New York where it opened at
Museum of Modern Art recently two subtle, pastel-coloured paintings of
female nudes were missing. Their owners withdrew the paintings after
several other artworks loaned to the museum were seized in the search
for Nazi plunder.
One of the collectors said explicitly that he had acted because of
the ownership dispute involving two Egon Schiele paintings detained
in New York after they were borrowed for a MoMA show in January. The
Schiele paintings, on loan from the Leopold Foundation in Austria,
are being held in New York while the district attorney's office
carries out a criminal investigation.
The absence of two Bonnard paintings is the latest sign of alarm in
the art world over works with a Nazi-clouded past. The missing
paintings, Grey Nude in Profile and Standing Nude were on view when
the exhibition showed at the Tate Gallery in London.
United States museums now dread the possibility that other collectors
will refuse to lend European paintings in case they are seized during
international shows. "When lenders see what happened to the Schiele
paintings it makes them nervous, even if they haven't any reason to
doubt their artworks," said Elizabeth Addison, Deputy Director for
Communications at MoMA. "The potential that something could happen is
enough."
Since the collapse of Communism, Eastern European families, in
particular, have been actively pursuing the trail of artworks
confiscated during the second World War. A Hungarian Jew, Gabor Bedo,
whose father, Rudolf, sent his £5 million art collection to London for
safekeeping during the war, will lodge a compensation claim against
the British government this week.
Rudolf Bedo's collection of 150 paintings included a Renoir
still-life and a landscape by the 17th century Dutch master, Jan van
Goyen. He was just one of thousands of Jews who lodged property and
accounts in Britain during the second World War.
But the Trading with the Enemy Act, allowed the UK authorities to
freeze the property of all residents of enemy or enemy-occupied
countries. The British government sold Mr Bedo's collection at auction
in 1955. A scientist with a passion for art, Rudolf Bedo survived the
war but lost his sister in Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Mr Bedo
died in 1978, before the Communists fell and he had the opportunity to
pursue a claim for the art collection.
The British government promised earlier this year to repay assets
confiscated from Nazi victims. Lord Archer of Sandwell, a former
chairman of Amnesty International, was appointed this week as
independent assessor to compensation claims against the UK government.
Mr Bedo's case could open the floodgates for many other compensation
demands.
The subject of wartime plunder has become such a hot issue in the art
world, some of the world's leading museum directors have also got
together to form a task force. Earlier this month, the Association of
Art Museum Directors held a brainstorming session to come up with new
guidelines on how to deal with stolen artworks.
Under the chairmanship of Philippe de Montebello, director of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the group urged museums to
review their collections to establish if any works were unlawfully
confiscated by the Nazi régime.
The task force called for the creation of computerised research files
to cross-reference claims and stolen works of art. Institutions were
asked to scrutinise the origins of artworks before purchasing them or
accepting them as gifts.
In recent years many second World War documents have been
declassified, allowing art experts more information about the
ownership of European artworks. But some curators are worried that
they will become over-burdened with research into the provenance of
artworks. This could reduce the amount of European works available to
international audiences.
Mr Montebello stressed that museums are "committed to acting swiftly
and proactively to conduct the necessary research that will help us
learn as much as possible about works for which full ownership records
previously have not been available."
For decades, US museums have counted on federal or state laws that
protect art loans from detention or seizure. But a New York district
attorney claimed that state law did not shield artworks under criminal
investigation, when he ordered MoMA to detain the Schiele paintings
instead of returning them to Vienna.
MoMA had received two letters from Jewish families claiming that the
Schiele paintings were stolen or misappropriated from their rightful
owners when the Nazis annexed Austria (1938-1945).
Henry Bondi wrote that his aunt, Lea Bondi, owned Portrait of Wally
when Nazi collaborators took the painting from her apartment without
her consent. Lea Bondi died in 1969, having attempted three years
earlier to recover the painting.
RITA and Kathleen Reif, relatives of Fritz Grunbaum, stated that the
painting Dead City III was taken from Mr Grunbaum's collection without
his consent by Nazi agents or collaborators after his arrest in
Austria. He later died in the Dachau concentration camp.
A New York district attorney is now investigating claims that the
works made their way improperly into private collections after the
second World War. Last month a US court ruling said that the Museum of
Modern Art could return the two borrowed Egon Schiele paintings
despite a continuing criminal investigation into their ownership. But
the New York district attorney examining the charges is appealing the
decision. Art world experts predict that it could be a long time
before the works are returned to Austria, even if the court decision
is upheld.
The leading international museums rely on borrowing paintings from
overseas to present first-rate shows. But the issue of art stolen
during the Holocaust is provoking changes in policy. "I do think that
everyone is becoming much more sensitised to this issue and most
museums are taking extra precautions with their own collections. At
MoMA, we are doing research on all works from this historic period,
says Ms Addison.
MoMA breathed a sigh of relief when the Netherlands decided not to
contest a claim to a painting by Vincent Van Gogh recently left to the
museum by a private collector. The Dutch government says it has a
right to Olive Trees, estimated to be worth around £21 million pounds.
But the Dutch authorities said that they would not demand the
painting's return to set an example and avoid a circus of claims and
counterclaims.
Other institutions are taking new measures to protect their
collections. Before the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, shipped
three dozen works by Paul Klee to an exhibition in Berlin recently,
museum officials wrote to German museums asking if they had any claims
on them. In Washington, the US State Department is now assessing
whether new regulations are needed to protect international cultural
loans from seizure.
Ethical problems surrounding paintings confiscated by the Nazi regime
threaten the free flow of art work across the Atlantic. But the
world's top museums cannot afford to turn a blind eye to stolen art.
Copyright: The Irish Times
A motorist was arrested by Los Angeles police Monday after he
reportedly drove his car through a security barricade at the Getty
Museum and crashed into a stairwell before being detained by security
officials. The man, identified as Donald Romps, was being treated
late Monday at UCLA Medical Center for head injuries received in the
incident, said Sgt. Bobby Smith, watch commander at the LAPD's West
Los Angeles station. The museum was not open Monday. Smith said
officers received a call about 12:30 p.m. that a motorist had driven
through and broken the arm of a metal barricade. "He drove through
the barricade, causing some damage to it," Smith said. "He then drove
into the arrival plaza and collided with a stairway. He got out of
his car, ran through the area and was detained by security
officials." Smith said the damage to the museum was minimal. "In
addition to the broken barricade arm, he reportedly chipped some
stones in the stairway," Smith said. "But people up there at the
museum say there was minimal damage." Museum officials refused to
comment on the incident and security guards on the scene Monday told
a reporter that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred there.
