🌅 This Museum Features Nazi-Looted Art

SOURCE

Musée d’Orsay

WHAT TO KNOW

• The Musée d’Orsay in Paris debuted a new permanent exhibition this month, showcasing 13 works of art that were stolen or sold under duress in France during World War II. The exhibition—titled Who Owns These Works?—will feature 225 such orphaned artworks on a rotating basis, some of which are suspended between panes of glass so the public can also view the back. French officials hope the exposure will lead to clues that can help prove the works’ provenance, or history of ownership, with the ultimate aim of returning the pieces to the descendants of their rightful owners.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The exhibition is part of France’s reckoning with its role in the Holocaust under the Vichy government, which cooperated with the Nazis and is now recognized as a collaborator. The Vichy government sent some 80,000 Jewish refugees and French citizens to death camps during the war, while also presiding over a lucrative Paris art market that enriched Nazis and their collaborators on the property of the dead and dispossessed.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The Nazis invaded France on May 10, 1940, arriving with tremendous buying power and a thirst for both the possessions of Jewish art collectors and acquisitions to expand German museum collections. The Nazis looted more than 100,000 artworks and cultural artifacts from France during the war, of which 60,000 were recovered after the war ended. Around 45,000 of the recovered works were returned to their rightful owners after the war, and the French government sold all but 2,200 of the remaining 15,000 in the early 1950s. Since then, fewer than 200 pieces have been returned.