A new committee to redress the injustices and spoliations of history
In Switzerland, the Federal Council recently established a new committee to advise on disputes over artworks looted during the Nazi period, as well as repatriation claims for cultural objects that entered the country under colonialism. The committee, which will consist of nine to 12 as-yet-unnamed experts, will be called the “Independent Commission for Historically Contaminated Cultural Heritage.” The new Swiss commission comes on the heels of other attempts to address such problematic works. In 1998, the Washington Principles on art confiscated by the Nazis were declared. In the same year, Austria created a Commission for Provenance Research. In Germany, the Limbach Commission was established in 2003, and reforms have recently been implemented to improve its effectiveness. France also has an independent commission, as do the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, Italy has no such commission and lacks a framework for the return of artworks with problematic provenances. Could this be a model for Italy in the future?
The stains of Nazism and slavery on Bührle’s art collection
Why did Switzerland establish an independent federal commission? This step was probably taken because of the ongoing controversy surrounding the Kunsthaus Zurich, which accepted artworks from a collection of German-born Swiss arms manufacturer Emile Bührle. In addition to supplying weapons to the Nazis during World War II, Bührle apparently employed hundreds of young girls in his factories in slave labor conditions until the 1950s. Bührle’s art collection is believed to have been created from looted works sold under duress when the owners of the artworks fled the Nazis. Even today, there is no mention of the problematic provenances on the Bürhle Foundation website. For example, for an 1879 Cezanne work, Paysage, the Foundation website neglects to reveal that the pre-war owners, Martha and Berthold Nothmann, had to flee Germany in 1939. It merely says that the couple “left Germany in 1939.” Similarly, the Kunsthaus neglects to provide information to the public about this collection.
From Bührle to Sackler
The fact that Bührle served on the museum’s board and financed an expansion of the museum is in itself problematic. But the problem was intensified when, after Bührle death, his foundation gave a substantial group of works on permanent loan to the museum, which accepted them into its public spaces without any verification of their provenance. The museum even went so far as to build a $220 million special extension to display the works. To continue to turn a blind eye is puzzling, since today many museums around the world have recognized and seriously rethought the acceptance of financial support and artworks from potentially problematic patrons. For example, in the case of museum donors such as Sackler, the pharmaceutical magnate who created an opioid epidemic, the family name has been removed from museum walls. This social responsibility is rapidly becoming normative.
The continued inaction at Kunstaus Zurich led an art collective to take matters into its own hands. It infiltrated the Kunsthaus and replaced the museum’s QR codes on works by Cezanne, Rouault, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Renoir and Picasso. A link took the viewer to Mr. Bührle’s true story and alerted the public to the artworks’ provenances.
Although the museum did not think it appropriate to disclose the problematic stories about the ownership of the artworks, further pressure from the public caused it to change course, even if only partially. To provide context for the works, the museum has now opened a new exhibition on the Bührle collection entitled “Art, Context, War and Conflict.” But even this has been criticized as not enough. In addition, many controversial works have not yet been investigated or restituted by the Bührle Foundation. All this is surprising because numerous museums today have created pioneering exhibitions with wall labels that truthfully explain how the works came into their collections. Some museums have gone so far as to ask the viewer to contact the museum if they see an illicitly acquired work. Others have created exhibitions that ask the viewer to put themselves in the director’s shoes, using the exhibitions to make people understand the dilemmas these works pose without offering simplistic solutions.
What’s new in the Swiss commission?
The Swiss Committee’s model presents several novelties. Unlike Germany’s Limach Commission, which mediates only when two parties fail to resolve a dispute, the Swiss commission will proceed even if only one of the parties files a complaint. This promises to give more freedom to individual parties to file claims without the museum having to agree. The Swiss commission will also consider all types of looted heritage, not just that looted by the Nazis. But like other commissions so far, the Swiss commission can only make non-binding recommendations, and this could lead to their findings having less impact, as was the case in Germany. The hope is that governments will step in to give weight to their findings.
According to Katharina Hüls-Valenti, an art historian who specializes in provenance research and who recently organized a conference for scholars in Venice to address the problems of Italy and provenance, “the Swiss decision to establish a commission for the return of art objects illegally looted during the Nazi-Fascist era is an important signal of explicit accountability. Moreover, the model of broadening the commission’s jurisdiction to include matters relating to objects of colonial provenance is currently unique at the European level, the adoption of which would also lend itself well to Italy given its history. It would therefore be desirable that the paths taken by Switzerland, and earlier this year by France, could foster a similar development in Italy, which, like the other countries, is part of the 44 countries that signed the Washington Principles in 1998.”
Provenance research: a job that requires very high expertise
The key to assessing the origins and chain of ownership of a work of art is always provenance research. This work can only be done by trained art historians who are highly specialized in this field. In my opinion, the research should be conducted or at least checked independently from the market. Provenance researchers are often experts in different fields, such as works looted during the Nazi era, or from the colonial era, or illegally acquired antiquities…But in Italy, training in provenance research is not considered of primary importance in a curriculum or academic setting. Nor is adequate provenance due diligence training, conducted according to a shared method, a priority for Italian museums. Many museums in other countries have specialized provenance researchers and dedicated departments. Outside of Italy, art law firms regularly employ highly trained independent art historians specialized in provenance research for this delicate work. Finally, problematic provenances are sometimes neglected, blurred or omitted in art market transactions. As a result, wall labels, exhibition catalogues and sales end up lacking crucial information, leaving collectors and the public in the dark. In my opinion, as foreshadowed in the name of the new commission, independence will be paramount, and hopefully the Swiss model will consider independence from conflicts of interest as determinant in the appointment of its members.
