Provenance Hunting in the Louvre
July 19 2021
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
The New York Times have run an article at the weekend on the work being conducted by Emmanuelle Polack (pictured). Polack was hired by the Louvre in 2020 to investigate restitutions and has since uncovered several works with questionable war-time provenances.
As the article explains:
In March, the Louvre put a catalog of its entire collection online — nearly half a million artworks. There is a separate category for a mini-collection of more than 1,700 stolen artworks returned to France after World War II that the museum still holds because no rightful owners have come forward. Other French museums hold several hundred more works.
Their presence is still an embarrassment for France. After World War II, about 61,000 stolen paintings, sculptures and other artworks were returned; the postwar government swiftly turned over 45,000 of them to survivors and heirs, but sold thousands more and kept the funds. The ones that remain in French museums are sometimes known as the “orphans.”
