Gallery Owner

  You are the Curator of a museum and wish to make a purchase for your collection.  You need to check the history of ownership of the artwork.  How does one determine if a work of art was stolen?  You check the provenance of the art work.  What is provenance?  It is the history of ownership of a valued object or work of art.  In current times, the artworks with the most suspicious provenance were in Europe from the period 1933-1945, the Nazi/World War II era.  "This defined period of time is somewhat misleading, however, as art confiscations did not begin immediately with Hitler's accession to power. The more programmatic confiscations began later than 1933, with the establishment of the ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg), Hitler's official art-looting agency. http://www.clevelandart.org/provenance

Questions to consider:

1.  Whose responsiblilty is it to know the provenance of the artwork?  Why? 

2.  How would the story have changed if Marilyn Alsdorf had checked the provenance before she sent it to France to be sold?

 3.  Why did Carlota Landsberg recieve restitution?  How does this impact your decision of who is the rightful owner?

Pablo Picasso
Femme en Blanc

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CURATOR'S ASSIGNMENT: 

Many museums and governments are working to put together the provenance of their art collections.  You can visit online resources to check the provenance by going to the central registry: http://www.lootedart.com/search/
It is your job to inquire about the art work your museum wishes purchase. 

4. Chose which piece of art you find most appealing and use the links below the images to determine the provenance of the artwork.  Explain why you wanted this particular art to be displayed in your museum.  Tell us what you found most appealing about the art work you chose and list three important facts about the artist.  Record you findings on the same sheet of paper with the answers to questions 1-3 above.
 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Young Girl in a Pink-and-Black Hat
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
 

Henri Rousseau
Landscape at Pontoise
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
 

Auguste Rodin
The Walking Man
The Art Institute of Chicago
 

Gustav Klimt
Adele Bloch Bauer I
Private Webpage
BBC News article

Remember, it is your job to represent the muesum world in determining who is the rightful owner of this piece. Don't forget to create a Power Point Presentation with your ideas about this story and ownership.


Other Resources:
Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937
History of the Holocaust
Museum Security article on the World Jewish Congress
Public Art at the World Trade Center