Holocaust Art Restitution Project

04/18/2026

This summer, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) is proud to announce its annual conference on art crime, cultural heritage and provenance research slated for June 19-21, 2026 in Amelia, Italy. ARCA is also offering a package bundling the conference with a weeklong workshop on provenance research following the conference.
Read all about it! We look forward to seeing you in sunny Amelia and sharing quality moments with you.

The Amelia Conference June 19-21 + Provenance Research, Theory and Practice course in Amelia, Italy this summer. Acknowledging the formidable challenge of searching for and reclaiming looted cultural assets, and understanding that the path to repatriation and restitution requires practical knowledge...

11/10/2025

A painting bought in 1944 by Hildebrand Gurlitt in Paris then shipped to Munich for incorporation into Hitler's Linz museum project, was then stolen in April 1945 from its storage place at the Munich Führerbau and ended up in Rodeo, California. American investigators found it and recovered it in 1949.

Hildebrand Gurlitt "Landscape" by J. B. Huet by Marc Masurovsky During the German occupation of France, Hildebrand Gurlitt (1895-1956) was o...

11/08/2025

A Titian painting belonging to a Czech citizen and stored in a Paris bank vault disappeared in December 1940 following a visit to that bank by Hitler's favorite art dealer, Maria Almas-Dietrich. It ended up at Berchtesgaden where US troops found it in 1945. For three years, the French demanded its repatriation claiming it as part of their cultural heritage while the Czechs said it had been sold without the consent of the owner. All of this with the Cold War heating up in the background. You can guess how this story ends.

Portrait of Alfonso II d'Este and his secretary, by Titian by Marc Masurovsky Josef Skvor was a Czech businessman born on 8 April 1888 in C...

11/05/2025

How banal can plunder be? Here is a typical example during the final Allied campaign against Germany in March-April 1945.

by Marc Masurovsky Map of Dillingen an der Donau The final Allied military push against N**i Germany unfolded in March 1945 when American tr...

11/01/2025

Rose Valland mania.

by Marc Masurovsky Many books have been published about Rose Valland, the unsung French heroine of WWII in her quest to recover and protect ...

06/24/2025

In 1961, Rose Valland recounted her tribulations at the Jeu de Paume in Paris during WWII and as a restitution officer for the French government after 1945. She highlighted her role in defending the integrity of French museums, their collections and her conception of French cultural heritage. One might wonder: as a French curator and art historian, did she have an equal opportunity approach in her campaign to protect and defend “French collections”? how did she define “French collections”? Did she include collections of works by lesser known Jewish artists working in France who were not members of the pantheon of artists adulated by wealthy Jewish collectors who were also patrons of French state museum collections and frequent donors thereto? Most of these lesser-known artists perished in the Final Solution.

Le front de l'art by Rose Valland, 1961, Plon edition, in French / français

05/22/2025

Part two of Ori Soltes' study of Alice Lok Cahana's paintings which echo in thought-provoking and almost mystical fashion her wartime trauma as a Holocaust survivor who saw hell up close.

by Ori Z Soltes The actual gate at Auschwitz The very materials and techniques that Cahana used are metaphors for the reality they convey. T...

05/22/2025

Alice Lok Cahana, Holocaust survivor and artist.

by Ori Z Soltes The Cahana Family Alice Lok Cahana (1929-2017) responded to the human quest for immortality by achieving it in a multi-laye...

05/09/2025

The Ciric Law Firm is recruiting legal externs for its Fall 2025 externship program. All applicants welcome!
file:///Users/marc1956/Desktop/Fall%202025%20Externship%20Program%20Description-05-09-2025-SHORT%20VERSION.html

05/07/2025

How does a painting sold in Paris in 1938 ostensibly under duress by a German-Jewish family fleeing N**i persecution be subject to a settlement (not a restitution) in the US while another painting from that same collection sold under the same circumstances in Paris was restituted to the same heirs by the French government?
Contrasts in perception and understanding of the same event? or is it that Americans try to find an easier path to such conflicts by encouraging financial solutions instead of the physical return of the object? Not clear and no easy answers.

Portrait of Georges the Bearded by Marc Masurovsky In late August 2024, the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, PA, announced that it had rea...

04/19/2025

More often than not, N**i plunderers erroneously assigned confiscated objects to the wrong victimized owners. These mistakes can reverberate into our era. When we stumble on them, we need to fix them, as best we can.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, NY "Zwei Griechinnen", 1941 Sotheby's 1990 By Marc Masurovsky When it comes to confiscated Jewish cultural assets, w...

02/21/2025

The mounting "Kulturkampf" in the United States is reminiscent of a similar problem in 1946 with Abstract art being touted as an exemplar of American innovation and creativity only to be reviled and censored by stalwarts in the US government and Congress. End result? a fire sale that benefited hugely collections in the oddest corners of the US...like Norman, Oklahoma. Careful what you wish for!

“Art Interrupted,” an exhibit of controversial mid-20th century modern art, is on view through June 9 at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.