Website review: Israel Museum - The New York Times ...
Teiresias discovered this in Arts
•2 reviews since Feb 26, 2008
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•nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/19/arts/2008022...
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Teiresias discovered 6 months ago- Looted Jewish Art on Display in France In a remarkable feat of cooperation between France and Israel, requiring intensive negotiations and the passage of a law by the Israeli Parliament, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has opened an exhibition of important art looted by the Nazis from France and then returned after the war. Some of it was never reclaimed, presumably because the owners were killed in the Holocaust.
A painting by German artist Max Liebermann, part of the exhibition "Looking for Owners." Running parallel to the show of French-held art is a companion exhibition: looted art, with no known owners, held in custody by the Israel Museum itself. The two exhibitions are haunting, and they also contain some notable art, including works by Cézanne, Manet, Degas, Chagall, Delacroix, Egon Schiele, Monet, Alfred Sisley, Max Liebermann, Pieter de Hooch and others. The 53 French-held paintings are among some 2,000 works still not restored to their owners or descendants and maintained by French museums. The Israeli collection is smaller and less distinguished but includes an important Schiele cityscape of his mother's birthplace, "Krumau -- Crescent of Houses (The Small City V)," whose splayed arrangement of the houses carries an implicit sexual power.
The French exhibition is titled "Looking for Owners: Custody, Research and Restitution of Art Stolen in France During World War II." France's minister of culture and communications, Christine Albanel, came to Jerusalem to help open the exhibit Monday evening, despite a fierce winter storm.
France has both a duty and "a very strong desire" to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust, she said. In part, the exhibition fulfills a requirement of a French commission formed in 1997 to study Jewish property restitution, which recommended a project with the Israel Museum.
A visitor views "The Bather" by Courbet. But Ms. Albanel is credited for working to persuade the French bureaucracy to approve showing such important paintings, instead of more ordinary work; not all looted art was either good or valuable. A painting by German artist Dirck de Quade van Ravestyn. Still, Israel first had to pass a law that prevents the seizure of art temporarily exhibited in Israel by those who claim to own it. The 2007 legislation states that claims can be made only in the exhibition's country of origin, in this case France. France would not have allowed the pictures to be shown here without such a law, a legacy of the 1998 controversy over the seizure in New York of Schiele paintings on loan from the Leopold Foundation in Vienna. James S. Snyder, the director of the Israel Museum, praised Ms. Albanel, saying that "there is a resonance between the art and the state of Israel" because both were rescued, in a sense, "from the ashes of the tragedy of the war." The exhibition, he said, "is a kind of memorial to our loss in Europe."- Looted Jewish Art on Display in France In a remarkable feat of cooperation between France and Israel, requiring intensive negotiations and the passage of a law by the Israeli Parliament, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has opened an exhibition of important art looted by the Nazis from France and then returned after the war. Some of it was never reclaimed, presumably because the owners were killed in the Holocaust.
- kavis rated 6 months ago
- From the page: "In a remarkable feat of cooperation between France and Israel, requiring intensive negotiations and the passage of a law by the Israeli Parliament, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem has opened an exhibition of important art looted by the Nazis from France and then returned after the war. Some of it was never reclaimed, presumably because the owners were killed in the Holocaust. The following images are from the exhibition "Looking for Owners" at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem."
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