Grossman LLP | Vienna's Jewish Museum Home to Hundreds of Looted Objects
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  • Vienna's Jewish Museum Home to Hundreds of Looted Objects
    03/08/2013
    Austrian museums are no strangers to the issues surrounding the restitution of Nazi-looted art to their rightful owners.  Perhaps the most well-known case is that of Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally, which was exhibited to the public last year for the first time in over a decade after the Leopold Museum reached a $19 million settlement with the heirs of Lea Bondi—the painting’s owner at the time it was seized by the Nazis in 1939.

    But it was quite surprising to learn of recent reports that a Jewish museum is currently thought to hold about 500 works of art and 900 books of dubious origin.  These works have come to light as a result of a screening program that began in 2007 to go through the collection in search of objects seized from their rightful owners.  It should be noted that this program, while crucial in the hunt for Nazi-looted objects, was established years after other museums had already begun combing through their own collections.

    The commitment to provenance research is just as important for Jewish museums as it is for other institutions.  European Jewish museums must continue their efforts to identify objects of questionable origin in their collections, as such museums often served as repositories for confiscated Jewish property during the war.
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