Historical Inspiration

by Walter Pavlo In September, Moderna Museet Stockholm decided that a portrait by Austrian expressions artist Oskar Kokoshka would be returned to the family of Alfred Flechtheim.  The museum bought the piece in 1934, a year after Alexander Vömel, an art dealer who was a member of the Nazi Party’s brownshirts paramilitary group, confiscated Flechtheim’s entire Dusseldorf gallery.  In 2009, the same museum…

by Daniel Boffey, Brussels The decision of a Dutch art committee to back one of the Netherlands’ most prestigious museums in its attempt to hold on to a prized painting obtained from a Jewish family in 1940 has sparked an international outcry over the fate of Nazi loot across Europe. The binding ruling against the descendants…

Amsterdam — Throughout World War II, the Dutch art dealers Benjamin and Nathan Katz sold art they owned, including works by Rembrandt and Jan Steen, to Nazi officials, in one case in exchange for exit visas that enabled 25 Jewish relatives to escape the German-occupied Netherlands. Some critics have called the Katzes collaborators because they…