Ongoing: The Restitution Of Nazi-Looted Art
On 3 December 1998, representatives of 44 governments convened in Washington, DC to endorse a set of principles designed to help the heirs of Jewish collectors recover their families’ Nazi-looted art. The goal of the non-binding Washington Principles was “to complete by the end of this century the unfinished business of the middle of the centuryâ€, Stuart Eizenstat, the US official who hosted the 1998 conference, said in his concluding statement. Twenty years on, that timetable has proved much
too optimistic. Nazi-looted art is still regularly restituted: high-profile cases in the past year include an Oskar Kokoschka portrait returned to the heirs of the German-Jewish dealer Alfred Flechtheim by Sweden’s Moderna Museet (and sold for a record $20.4m on 12 November at Sotheby’s in New York). Many families are still seeking pictures stolen from their forefathers in what has been called the greatest art heist of all time.
