As a recent Arts Hub Global feature has discussed, there is nothing new about Art theft.
History is full of examples, including the disappearance in 1911 of what is arguably the most famous painting in the world – the Mona Lisa – and the recent Munch heist.
Important pieces have always been targeted by ingenious art thieves supplying an ever active and enormously lucrative black market where demand for major pieces is in inverse proportion to their scarcity.
Such occurrences often only add to the allure with record turnouts by art lovers whenever the recovered pieces go on public display.
But the spoils of war are different. Now commonly known as ‘tainted art’, the term refers to artworks stolen during the Nazi era by Hitler and his political machine as part of an established policy to confiscate the valuables of wealthy Jewish families. In some cases these pieces are now worth tens of millions of dollars.
Missing for decades, they are turning up in the private collections of wealthy art collectors or museums.
Not surprisingly, the art carries with it the undeniable stigma of the dark and troubled history of its disappearance and the horrors undergone by the original owners.
After the defeat of the Nazis by the allied forces, it was often the case that such works, with the death of their owners in concentration camps, ended up in American hands and then disappearing into the collections of wealthy collectors. In turn, a wealth of controversy has been created over both the restitution of the pieces to their rightful owners, and the equally rocky dilemma of the legal and ethical responsibilities of museums, art dealers and auction houses in terms of displaying or attempted purchase of these controversial pieces by their current owners.
Public perceptions regarding the realities of so called ‘tainted art’ differ from country to country and government to government. Some are in full favour of returning the pieces to their rightful owners, whilst others hold to the belief that as the pieces were in many cases legitimately acquired on the part of their current owners; that possession is, as indeed is commonly held, nine tenths of the law.
In the international art scene concerted efforts are being made to avoid the minefield that the sale and purchase for display that these pieces of so called ‘tainted art’ works drag in their wake.
Developments such as the Art Loss Register have done much to stem the tide of ‘tainted art’ remaining in hands of unlawful owners. The Register, widely recognized as being ‘the world’s largest private international database of lost and stolen art, antiquities, and collectables’ was expressly created to provide much needed recovery and search services to collectors, the art trade, insurers and law enforcement agencies through the use of modern technology used in conjunction with the skills of a professionally trained staff of art historians.
As many of the original claimants of the ‘tainted art’ pieces head into their advanced years with no sign of reparation or repatriation in sight, in many cases is will be left up to the efforts of their heirs and ever changing governmental policies to determine how this volatile issue will be handled in the global arena for decades to come.
The ethics of the situation has become clear to many governments and museums. But with many private collectors prizing the ‘unattainable’, could there be a danger of the temptation of ‘forbidden fruit’ overriding the morality?
