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This year, Paris' Musée d'Orsay opened a permanent exhibition space to display paintings that were most likely stolen from Jewish families during World War II and whose owners have never been found. The room highlights ongoing work to track down those rightful owners. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley visited the museum and has this story.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Tourists from around the world flock to the Musée d'Orsay to see its spectacular impressionist collection, but now the museum wants visitors to think more deeply about some of the artwork that is here. It recently opened a small, permanent room off a main gallery. The sign above the entrance reads, to whom do these works belong? The answers aren't easy.
INES ROTERMUND-REYNARD: Of course, the families aren't there anymore, the people who had these works with them.
BEARDSLEY: Ines Rotermund-Reynard is the Musée d'Orsay's head provenance researcher. She's responsible for confirming the ownership history of every work in this museum. She points to a large tableau painted by Belgian artist Alfred Stevens in 1891, which shows a girl with her arm around a younger boy, leaning over a balcony looking out on a Normandy beach.
ROTERMUND-REYNARD: And they are looking on the seaside, on the balcony with flowers, so it's a very beautiful subject, if you want. But the story of the painting, it's much less beautiful.
BEARDSLEY: The painting once hung at Hitler's Bavarian Alpine retreat, known as Eagle's Nest. Rotermund-Reynard says it was likely caught up in the large-scale pillage of art by the Nazis that began as soon as they marched into Paris in June 1940.
ROTERMUND-REYNARD: Cultural looting was very much organized since the beginning. The Nazis knew the huge Jewish collections, and they started from June on to go to the families' places, to the apartments, and to take the work.
BEARDSLEY: Some 100,000 artworks were spoliated during the Nazi occupation. Spoliated is a term used by the art world to refer to the pillaging, confiscation or sale under duress of a work of art. Many of the works were destined for a museum Hitler planned for his hometown in Linz, Austria. After Germany's defeat, there was a massive art recovery effort.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE MONUMENTS MEN")
GEORGE CLOONEY: (As Frank Stokes) The Nazis have been stealing art out of Warsaw, Amsterdam, Paris. We've all been selected because we're going to need your knowledge.
BEARDSLEY: The film "Monuments Men," starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, shows how American forces led efforts to bring works back from Austria and Germany. Much of that recovery was made possible due to extensive documentation of the theft during the Nazi occupation by Rose Valland, a bespectacled middle-aged volunteer at the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris that served as a clearinghouse for the looted art. The Nazi officials who came and went didn't notice her, says Rotermund-Reynard, and unbeknownst to them, Valland spoke German.
ROTERMUND-REYNARD: And thanks to her notes, like secret notes, a lot of these artworks have been recovered after the war.
BEARDSLEY: Sixty thousand paintings and other art objects were brought back to France and 45,000 returned to their owners or surviving family members. But in 1950, the restitution work stopped as the world moved on. In the late '90s, interest in Nazi-era stolen art resurged, and there was a renewed effort to return paintings to their rightful owners. At a conference in Washington, D.C., in 1998, 44 countries agreed to investigate works with gaps in ownership between 1933 and 1945. David Zivie is head of the French government's renewed mission to return looted cultural property. He says the new exhibit room at the Musée d'Orsay is part of a push to reopen files and explore archives with a fresh eye.
DAVID ZIVIE: Yes, of course, it's late, and each year it's later, but a lot of work is now being made today - not only today, but in the last 20, 25 years. The room is really for also to explain, to show the work, and we are doing more and more restitution, even 80 years after the war.
BEARDSLEY: French museums are in temporary custody of some 2,000 likely Nazi-looted artworks. The works have a special status and are being held until their legal owners are found. It's complicated work, but there's been key progress in recent years, says Rotermund-Reynard. Formerly sealed wartime archives have been opened and others digitized.
ROTERMUND-REYNARD: When I started to work on this subject, like, 20 years ago, it was still difficult, but today, you really have the information.
BEARDSLEY: She says the key is finding the last owner of a painting before the war. Looted paintings were often sold and resold at auctions, further obscuring their original ownership. I talked to longtime Paris art dealer Neal Fiertag in a crowded restaurant. He says gone are the days when you could buy or sell a piece of art without knowing its exact provenance during the war. He says institutions have been cracking down, especially in the last decade.
NEAL FIERTAG: A friend and I were going to buy something at an auction in London, Italian drawing of the 16th century, but there was a gap. There was a gap from the 1930s to the early '50s. So we just said, no, we're not going to do it because we don't need the heartache of trying to prove where this work was during the war.
BEARDSLEY: France has returned 16 paintings to families in the last 30 years, but things are speeding up, says writer Pauline de Perignon, who got back a painting that belonged to her great-grandfather.
PAULINE DE PERIGNON: They really listened to my claim, and they helped me.
BEARDSLEY: She now helps other families with their claims to recover lost artworks. She says the painting restitution ceremony where the French Minister of culture paid tribute to her great-grandfather was moving and healing.
DE PERIGNON: Because all my family was there, you know, they were, like, 90-years-old uncles that never gathered together. So the family was united for this special occasion, listening to the story of their grandfather who they all loved and knew. It's very (speaking French) - positive for the family.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Back in the special exhibit room at the Orsay Museum, a video with English subtitles shows the dramatic history of the looted art. The Orsay's 225 works of unknown provenance will be rotated through here. Each has a QR code giving its history. The painting titled "A Brother And Sister Looking Out Over A Beach In Normandy" by Alfred Stevens was sold twice at a Paris auction - in 1939 and again in 1942, when it was acquired for Hitler. The painting's original owner has never been found. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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