The US House of Representatives is sticking its big toe out hoping it won't get chopped off by proposing to fund the arts in despite current efforts to defund them. Let's sit back and watch. Even in the darkest times (McCarthyism namely), the Feds funded the arts. hyperallergic.com/house-votes-...

The US just pulled out of two cultural heritage organizations because they "are contrary to the interests of the United States" and are a waste of money. What is the current administration's policy on cultural heritage preservation and protection worldwide? None? hyperallergic.com/trump-withdr...

A major heist involving objects tied to the East India Company at a museum in Bristol. An anti-colonial act? anything is possible. Do the thieves think that objects tied to Britain's colonial past are "high-value" on the international market? www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Manifest Destiny" is making a comeback. hyperallergic.com/homeland-sec...

When politicians, lawmakers, eminent citizens equate modern art and non-representational esthetics with "Bolshevism", "communism" and "cultural degeneration", they emulate Adolf Hitler in his Mein Kampf. In plain English, it's Nazi thinking.

Relevant article in Artforum about government attempts at suppressing free artistic expression. Lessons can be drawn from the past to inform our present and protect us moving forward. www.artforum.com/features/the...

We deplore the cuts imposed across the board on American cultural institutions. One potentially big problem is how these cuts affect research on the collections? In other words, do they interfere with museums' due diligence responsibilities? www.artforum.com/news/report-...

"Every artist must take sides". Agree? Disagree? Can artists remain neutral in the face of genocide? occupation? persecution? marginalization? How should we assess the behavior of artists during the Nazi era, 1933-1945? Should we view artists as "different"? adk.de/programm/ver...

Obritsa Popa produced a study of egregious thefts of cultural treasures in Germany by US army personnel. www.amazon.com/Bibliophiles...

French painting by Huet, purchased by Hildebrand Gurlitt for the Linz Museum, was stolen from the Führerbau in Munich (late April 1945) and ended up in Rodeo, California before being sent back to Munich (1949) and repatriated to France. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2025/11/gurl...

Back in 2017, we wrote this sobering piece about the new hand that we had been dealt. Is it still timely? plundered-art.blogspot.com/2017/01/a-ne...

A Titian painting owned by a Czech citizen, removed from a safe in Paris during the German occupation, claimed by its pre-war owner, reverts back to France after the war. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2025/11/port...

Typical example of US army thefts during the final onslaught against Germany in March-April 1945. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2025/11/thef...

"Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) recounts the postwar prosecution of judges who made their bed with Hitler. It chronicles the weaponization of the independent judicial branch by the State against dissent and "undesirables". A must-see. True then, true now. www.britannica.com/topic/Judgme...

Why does Rose Valland benefit from at least 14 books about her accomplishments while her hero, Ardelia Ripley Hall, has benefited from a single article by Victoria Reed of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts? Paltry treatment for the architect of US restitution. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2011/03/arde...

It would be nice if those who plundered Jewish victims between 1933 and 1945 would be ridden with the same scruples as this man who stole a skull from a church and returned it 60 years later. There's still time to atone and make someone else happy. It's free. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Rose Valland mania. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2025/11/rose...

It takes a vision and lots of political will to break through historical barriers. Torie Reed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) achieved that singular feat through the restitution of pottery produced under enslavement. Pandora's box is open. No way to turn back. www.artnews.com/art-news/new...

The Metropolitan Museum has a new problem in its hands--a van Gogh painting misappropriated in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. One name returns: Justin Thannhauser. His amoral approach to the art trade makes him an important actor in laundering Nazi looted art. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

New French film, "La Vente (Auction)", about the freak discovery of a missing Schiele painting in Eastern France and its restitution and sale at Christie's. Having been involved in the search for the painting, this film resonates for all the wrong reasons. hyperallergic.com/1052954/pasc...

The German government returns to the heirs of Grete Klein a Waldmüller painting which Klein lost after the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. artdependence.com/articles/gem...

In 1961, Rose Valland recounted her tribulations at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris during WWII and as a postwar French restitution officer. She defended French museums and France's cultural heritage. What about 2nd tier Jewish artists? www.monumentsmenandwomenfnd.org/projects/the...

arranged marriage between SNCF and AAMD to defeat art restitution claims by pushing to repeal the HEAR Act. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2025/10/opin...

French railroads (SNCF) allied with American museums (AAMD) against claimants in the US seeking restitution of their lost art? Strange bedfellows who want to defeat the HEAR Act. www.tabletmag.com/sections/new...

An interesting take on the Louvre heist. hyperallergic.com/1051113/the-...

The French government is proposing a more comprehensive approach to the restitution of forcibly displaced objects that have been incorporated into public collections. It's really about de-accession. The years are 1815-1972. theconversation.com/restitutions...

"...the withdrawal by a nation from orderly trade relations with the rest of the world... leads to regimentation of all phases of national life, to the suppression of human rights, and all too frequently to preparations for war and provocative attitude toward other nations..." Cordell Hull, 11.01.38

"I cannot prophesy the immediate economic effect of this new war on our Nation, but I do say that no American has the moral right to profiteer at the expense either of his fellow citizens or of the men, women, and children who are living and dying in the midst of war in Europe..." FDR, 3 Sep 1939

After the defeat of Hitler, Allied officers entrusted Bavaria with about 10,600 works on belief that looted art would be returned to the heirs of those who were robbed by the Nazis. Sadly, Bavaria gave many to Nazis. Where are those artworks today? www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/03/21/g... #art #WWII

How to get away with murder, or, how to dodge an indictment for crimes against humanity and die peacefully in bed? The case of Augusto Pinochet. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

Could this be a State-sanctioned Europe-wide theft (illicit repatriation) of rare books from the Russian literary canon for the benefit of Mother Russia? Anything is possible. All circumstantial signs point in that direction. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/o...

What about the 22 paintings by Henri Matisse? Who do they belong to? news.artnet.com/art-world/na...

History repeats itself like a snake biting its tail. ak-regionalgeschichte.de/forgotten-hi...

On 24 September 2025, IMEC in Caen (France) is offering a fascinating presentation on three Jewish women in the summer of 1942 facing the Holocaust and their own demise. imec-archives.com/activites/ju...

10 September 2025: Antiquities dug up at Teotihuacan, Mexico, on offer at Alexander Historical Auctions. Purportedly from the 1940s but the labels are dubious, pointing to loot. www.alexautographs.com/auction-cata...

10 September 2025: Alexander Historical Auctions, Elkton, MD, is selling a "desecrated" fragment from a Torah scroll, in violation of Jewish tenets for handling such objects. No surprises coming from a business that specializes in Nazi and Fascist memorabilia. www.alexautographs.com/auction-lot/...

What does restitution mean to the Tamaya people in New Mexico? "For pueblo people, a sacred item is like another person — living, breathing and intertwined with their identity." www.seattlepi.com/news/article...

During the German occupation of France, the cultural sphere was completely purged of its Jewish artists and of anything that smacked of abstract modernism, art with political and social themes. A curator, Yves Bouzardel, intimated that it was "la revanche du goût." Good taste prevailed. Whose taste?

While there seems nowadays to be a genuine rediscovery of Dora Maar as artist, friend of artists, photographer, muse, an unsettling detail has emerged in an article by Brigitte Benkemoum for Gagosian. Dora Maar owned a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf and hated Jews. gagosian.com/quarterly/20...

A Bonnard painting on offer in Sydney, Australia for close to 1 million Australian Dollars. This painting reminds us that you could acquire legitimate works of art on the Paris art market between 1940-1945 that were not tainted by theft and plunder. www.menziesartbrands.com/items/22384?...

Is cultural heritage destruction a human rights violation? One author explores this proposition in great detail, emphasizing the role of mass media in (de)sensitizing the public about the destruction of culture worldwide. hyperallergic.com/1021592/fram...

Russian painter Maria Ender died in Leningrad in 1942. A 1939 work is up for sale at Bonham's. For someone who never left Mother Russia, how did this 1939 painting end up at Raydon Gallery in NYC? Perhaps because it was exhibited at the NY World's Fair of 1939. www.bonhams.com/auction/3081...

This charming painting by Jewish artist Chaim Soutine was likely painted later (not in c. 1937), but as late as 1942. Most Soutine paintings are systematically misdated to this day. It is especially important to know which paintings Soutine produced while in hiding in German-occupied France.

Pompeii obtains restitution of an "erotic mosaic" lifted from the archaeological site by a Nazi officer during WWII in Italy. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

How does quintessentially Eastern European Jewish artist Chaim Soutine get to share his fundamentally Jewish heritage with a gigantic Catholic cross? He is buried at Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris (France).

What happens when a work of art is acquired in Paris during WWII and crosses the German border only to be repatriated by the French after 1945? plundered-art.blogspot.com/2011/05/rest...

an experimental look at Nazi looted art and other plundered objects, a bit dated, a bit strident, viewed from the perspective of claimants who are leery of current possessors' intentions regarding what they view as their rightful possession. Work in progress. vimeo.com/manage/video...

An updated look at what is known as "just and fair solutions" when resolving Nazi looted art restitution cases. More often than not, they lead to financial compensation schemes. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2016/01/when...

An updated commentary on Washington Principle #8 issued in December 1998 at the end of the Washington Conference on Holocaust-era Assets. This article was originally drafted and released on 4 November 2018 before the 20th anniversary of the Principles. plundered-art.blogspot.com/2018/11/wash...

By all appearances, if one reviews the past 25 years of Holocaust-era restitutions of looted, displaced, misappropriated, confiscated art, one would think that there were only two artists from Austria: Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. How is that possible? egonschieleonline.org