Louvre Hopes New Exhibit Of Nazi-Looted Art Will Help Find Owners
Hitler looking at a piece of looted art. Image by YouTube
By Ari Feldman February 2, 2018
The Louvre Museum in Paris has a new permanent exhibit: paintings stolen by the Nazis during the Nazi occupation of France, CNN reported.
More than 1,700 paintings that were recovered from Nazi looting hang on the walls of the Louvre, but the 31 paintings in this special exhibit are unique: They have yet to be reunited with their owners.
“These paintings don’t belong to us. Museums often looked like predators in the past, but our goal is to return them,” Sebastien Allard, the head of the paintings department at the Louvre, told the AP.
Though the Louvre has a long-standing program of returning looted artwork, it is laborious, and requires the claimant to provide proof. Since 1951, only 50 pieces have been returned to their original owners.
“People who come forward need, for instance, to establish the proof that the artwork belonged to their grandfather,” Allard said. “They need to find old family pictures and payment slips, or gather testimonies. It can take years.”
World War II saw roughly 100,000 pieces of art looted from France by Nazis. About 60,000 pieces were recovered, with most going back to their original owners.
Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
Fast Forward Trump nominee Ed Martin, who praised a Nazi sympathizer, also compared Biden to Hitler
-
Fast Forward Heavy police presence blocks anti-Israel protest in Brooklyn from reaching Jewish neighborhood
-
Fast Forward Ben-Gvir says he met with 4 members of Congress, rebuffed protesters at US Capitol
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 3
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 4
Fast Forward Columbia staff receive texts asking if they’re Jewish, as government hunts antisemitic harassment on campus
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish מחשבֿות פֿון אַן אַהיים־געקומענעם (אַ מלחמה־טאָגגבוך)Reflections of a soldier after returning home (a wartime diary)
דער מחבר איז אַ סטודענט אינעם ירושלימער העברעיִשן אוניווערסיטעט, אינעם צווייטן יאָר ייִדיש־לימוד
-
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
-
News At Harvard, reports on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bias reflect campus conflict over Israel
-
Opinion Is JB Pritzker’s very Jewish toughness the key to fighting Trump?
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.