The Musée Disparu: An Update

In November 1995, Hector Feliciano's book, Le musée disparu, created shockwaves in France. The Lost Museum, an English translation  published two years later by Basic Books, had a similar effect in the U.S.

Feliciano's bombshell concerned a little known collection of about 2000 Nazi-looted art works returned to France after the war and retained by the French government. Labeled the Musées nationaux récupération (MNR), these works were considered orphans. They were dispersed and quietly installed in various French museums ranging from the Louvre and Orsay in Paris to a large number of smaller institutions in the provinces. Feliciano accused the French government of having done little or nothing to seek out the rightful owners of the returned works or to notify surviving descendants.

Feliciano's reportage was widely covered in the French media. "Les musées détiennent 1,995 oeuvres d'art volées aux juifs pendant l'Occupation," headlined Le Monde, in one of many articles. In the U.S., the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and others carried the story. I myself wrote a couple of news pieces for the January 1997 and May 1997 issues of Art in America in which I covered the French government's embarrassed response to Feliciano's revelations-- their decision, first, to post information about some of the works on the web and, subsequently, to exhibit a small number of them at Orsay. Over the years, the story of the orphaned art works continued to haunt me-- so much so that recently it became part of Uncommon Crimes,  a novel I just finished writing.

The MNR story has never entirely disappeared from the media, but neither has much progress been made. In 2008, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, in conjunction with France's ministry of culture and communication, exhibited 53 works from the collection. And in February 2013, François Hollande's government announced that it was starting an intensive search for owners of the plundered art works. On January 23, 2014, a year later, Aurélie Filippetti, the French Minister of Culture, announced that seven works had been returned last year, and that three more, two from the Louvre and one from the Dijon's Musée des Beaux Arts, were about to be restored to their rightful owners. According to some reports, only 80 of the MNR works have thus far been returned.

This weekend, the New York Times has published a surprise addition to the MNR story. Titled "Loot No Longer" and written by Doreen Carvajal, it's the lead piece in the February 2, 2014, Arts and Entertainment section. An enterprising reporter, Carvajal was intrigued by the difficulties the French authorities claimed to have in their attempts to restore the MNR art works. She decided to see if she could do better. Starting with a large painting by Courbet in the Musée d'Orsay and working with a genealogy expert, Carvajal needed only two weeks of research "to find one of its likely owners, a descendant of a Jewish émigré  from Russia and her husband who consigned the Courbet painting for sale before they were arrested and deported to Auschwitz." That's only her first success-- for more, you should read Carvajal's fascinating article. Here's the link: Loot No Longer