Download Pdf - The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Justice Matters - Restituting Holocaust- Era Art and Artifacts
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Justice Matters
Restituting
Holocaust-Era Art and
Artifacts
19 – 20 May 2008
International Conference
Sponsored by the Max Stern Estate and organized in
collaboration with Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Marilyn Henry, “Restitution Roulette:
The Daunting Odds of Recovering Artworks Decades After the Nazi Era”
presented at:
“Justice Matters: Restituting Holocaust-Era Art and Artifacts”
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 20 May 2008
Columnist, Jerusalem Post and author, “Confronting the Perpetrators: A History of the Claims Conference.” Forthcoming book
(2009), “Twice Stolen:Recovering Nazi-Looted Jewish Art”
Using slides of a dozen pieces of Nazi-era looted artworks, Marilyn Henry suggested that for Jewish victims whose artworks were
taken, the ability to recover artworks decades after World War II was a matter of pure chance. "Restitution roulette" is a term
Henry has coined in the last several years to refer to the vagaries in locating and recovering artworks. These factors have nothing
to do with justice; instead they depend entirely on a set of random circumstances over which victims have no control.
The ability to recover Nazi-era displaced artworks depends on how the victim lost possession, to whom the object was lost, when
and where it was lost. It further depends on who has the object after the war, how and when they acquired it, and whether the
current owner is an individual or an institution, and if an institution, if it is public or private. It is further complicated by what country
the possessor is in, and what laws or policies apply.
This is a system that is extremely unjust to the claimant. This has been made especially clear by instances in which objects
confiscated or sold under duress by the same person on the same day in the same location under the same set of persecutory
measures are lost as a group, but they cannot be recovered as a group. Instead, they must be located and fought for one by one
depending on their location and ownership decades later.
At a seminar on the eve of the conference, Israel Museum Director James Snyder asked
when – or if – in the life of these artworks do they separate from Holocaust history? Henry, in her presentation, suggested that
once they have been looted, these artworks cannot be separated from Holocaust history.
http://www.imj.org.il/Justice_Matters_Conference/Marilyn_Henry.index.html (1 of 2) [08/09/2008 10:51:10]

Justice Matters - Restituting Holocaust- Era Art and Artifacts
She quoted John Coffey, the curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, speaking at a ceremony when the painting
''Madonna and Child in a Landscape,'' by Lucas Cranach the Elder, was formally reinstated in the museum. This was made
possible by a generous arrangement with the heirs of the pre-war owner, an Austrian industrialist, Philipp von Gomperz, who had
fled the Nazis.
Coffey referred to the Cranach this way: "Religious icon, aesthetic object, war loot, propaganda, commodity, memento, the
elusive object of a quest, and a symbol of hope and reconciliation: this small, exquisite painting has been all of these things. Its
various and contradictory meanings are the product of an extraordinary history. And that history, so full of meanings and itself so
meaningful, is what we intend to share with any and all who are drawn into the wonder of this picture.” Henry suggested this is true
of all Nazi-era looted art.
http://www.imj.org.il/Justice_Matters_Conference/Marilyn_Henry.index.html (2 of 2) [08/09/2008 10:51:10]