MUSEUM WORTHY

Art looting is commonly recognized as a central feature of Nazi expropriation in both the Third Reich and occupied territories After the war the famed Monuments Men and women recovered several hundred thousand pieces from the Germans makeshift repositories in churches castles and salt mines Well publicized restitution cases such as that of Gustav Klimt s luminous painting featured in the film Woman in Gold illustrate the legacy of Nazi looting in the art world today But what happened to looted art that was never returned to its rightful owners In France Belgium and the Netherlands postwar governments appropriated the most coveted unclaimed works for display in museums embassies ministries and other public buildings Following cultural property norms of the time the governments created custodianships over the unclaimed pieces without using archives in their possession to carry out thorough provenance ownership research This policy extended the dispossession of Jewish owners wrought by the Nazis and their collaborators well into the twenty first century The custodianships included more than six hundred works in Belgium five thousand works in the Netherlands and some two thousand in France They included paintings by traditional and modern maste