The Netherlands Art Property Collection (NK collection) is an art collection of recovered works of art that accrued to the Dutch state after World War II. This concerns works of art that were looted by the Nazi regime in the Netherlands or were purchased under duress or otherwise. [1] The collection is managed by the Cultural Heritage Agency and is part of the national collection. The works may be on loan from Dutch museums or government buildings, and some are also stored in depots.
Nazi Germany plundered artworks in every country it controlled from Jewish collectors, museums, libraries and churches. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the Allied Monuments Men located the stolen artworks and returned them to the governments of the countries where they had been stolen, with the understanding that the governments would then restitute them to their original owners. In many cases, however, the receiving countries kept the artworks and did not restitute them. [2]
Nazi-looted artworks recovered by the Allies and restituted after 1945 to the Netherlands came under the administration of the Dutch state. The state had the task of restoring the works to their rightful owners or their heirs; the Netherlands Art Property Foundation (SNK) was established for this purpose. [3] There were problems. Many artworks that had been looted from Jewish owners were not restituted to the heirs due to lengthy and difficult procedures, as in the case of the Goudstikker heirs. As a result of abuses, the SNK was disbanded on 1 July 1950 and its activities transferred to the Ministry of Finance. [4] The national interest seemed to prevail; for example, the Ministry of Finance saw the collection as a means of replenishing the State treasury. [5] From 1949 to 1953, auctions took place of items that could not be returned, and the artworks that eventually remained were placed in the NK collection. [6] Officials working for the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit included the Monuments Men Robert de Vries (1905-1983),Nicolaas Rudolph Alexander Vroom (1915-1995), Louis Jacob Florus Wijsenbeek (1912-1985), Karel Gerald Boon (1909-1996), David Cornelis Röell, Jonkheer (1894-1961) and the Dutch painter Otto Verhagen (1919-2003). [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
In 1998, the Origins Unknown Agency ("Herkomst Gezocht") (BHG) was established with the aim of conducting systematic research into the provenance history of all individual works of art. [13] At the start of the research, the collection consisted of some 4,700 items, including paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics, as well as silver, carpets and furniture. [14] [15] The BHG's research ran until 2005, and since 2001 several hundred works from the NK Collection have been returned. [16] [17] [18] [19]
In 2002 a study was published, Betwist bezit, which was commissioned by the BHG and concluded that in the early years of the SNK the priority was not the return of looted art to its rightful owners. [20] "It did not take long before they concluded: we can better house them in a museum. Restitution was secondary." [21]
The Origins Unknown Agency was dissolved in 2007. [22]
After the disbandment of the BHG, the database and accompanying website they compiled came under the management of NIOD's Expertise Center for Restitution, as of 2018. [23] [24] [25]
In 2020 a Dutch commission found the Netherlands' art restitution panel showed "too little empathy" to victims of Nazi aggression and sided too often with museums. [26]
On January 1, 2022, the BHG database and website were transferred to the Cultural Heritage Agency with a new online NK Collection portal. [27]
Nazi plunder was organized stealing of art and other items which occurred as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Nazi Party in Germany.
Baron Ferenc Hatvany was a Hungarian painter and art collector. A son of Sándor Hatvany-Deutsch and a member of the Hatvany-Deutsch family, he graduated in the Académie Julian in Paris. His collection included paintings by Tintoretto, Cézanne, Renoir, Ingres and Courbet, most notably L'Origine du monde and Femme nue couchée.
Jacques Goudstikker was a Jewish Dutch art dealer who fled the Netherlands when it was invaded by Nazi Germany during World War II, leaving three furnished properties and an extensive and significant art collection including over 1200 paintings, many of which had been previously catalogued as "Old Masters". The entire collection, which had been surveyed by Hermann Goering himself, was subsequently looted by the Nazis. Between the two World Wars, Jacques Goudstikker had been the most important Dutch dealer of Old Master paintings, according to Peter C. Sutton, executive director and CEO of the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science. Despite efforts of Goudstikker's widow after the war to regain possession of the collection, it was not until after her death that the Dutch government finally restituted 202 paintings to the Goudstikker family in 2006. To finance efforts to reclaim more of the stolen art, a large portion of them were sold at auction in 2007 for almost $10 million.
The Bavarian State Painting Collections, based in Munich, Germany, oversees artwork held by the Free State of Bavaria. It was established in 1799 as Centralgemäldegaleriedirektion. Artwork includes paintings, sculptures, photographs, video art and installation art. Pieces are on display in numerous galleries and museums throughout Bavaria.
Friedrich Bernhard Eugen "Fritz" Gutmann was a Dutch banker and art collector. A convert from Judaism, he and his wife were murdered by the Nazis in 1944, and parts of his art collection stolen by the German occupying forces. The collection and the fate of Fritz Gutmann is described by his grandson, Simon Goodman, in the 2015 book The Orpheus Clock.
Kurt Walter Bachstitz was a German-Austrian art dealer. He died shortly before his naturalization to the Netherlands.
Wilhelm Mautner was born in Vienna. He was an Austrian-German economist and attorney-in-fact of the Rotterdamse Bank who spent a part of his life in the Netherlands. Mautner was born Jewish. He was also an art collector.
Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. or LiroBank originally a Dutch Jewish bank, was seized and used by Nazis for looting Jewish property during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.
The Dutch: Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (NMVW) is an overarching museum organisation for the management of several ethnographic museums in the Netherlands, founded in 2014. It consists of the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal, and the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden. The National Museum of World Cultures works in close cooperation with the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam. It is also part of nation-wide Dutch organisations for research into provenance studies and projects of restitution of cultural heritage to countries of origin, like the former Dutch colony in today's Indonesia.
The Dutch Restitutions Committee was established in 2001 to deal with claims for the restitution of Nazi-era looted works of art to their original owners or their descendants. The rulings of the committee have been controversial with some restitution advocates arguing that they are unfair to claimants.
Kobe (pseudonym of Jacques Saelens, was a Belgian visual artist and sculptor.
Many priceless artworks by the Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh were looted by Nazis during 1933–1945, mostly from Jewish collectors forced into exile or murdered.
Johanna Margarethe Stern-Lippmann was a German Jewish art collector and victim of the Holocaust.
Armand Dorville (1875–1941) was a French art collector and lawyer whose art collection was plundered during the Nazi occupation of France.
Otto Verhagen was a Dutch painter, draftsman and museum director.
Richard Semmel was a German entrepreneur and art collector who was persecuted by the Nazis because of his Jewish heritage. His heirs have filed restitution claims for artworks.
The Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) was a special intelligence unit during World War II whose mission was to gather information and write reports about Nazi art looting networks. Composed of only a few handpicked men, the small unit conducted interrogations and investigations in Europe starting in 1944 and focusing mainly on Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Their mission was different from but related to that of the Monuments Men. After the war, the reports the ALIU wrote were marked secret and forgotten for many years until the late 1990s when they began to be declassified. The reports remain an important source for research into the history of the origin of works of art and for the restitution of looted art from the Nazi era.
David Cornelis Röell was a Dutch museum director.
rather than return work to each heir, the allies decided give the paintings back to the rightful governments (which often were still anti-Semitic) for ultimate restitution
The Netherlands Art Property Foundation was founded by the Dutch government to recuperate and restitute works of art, and used the thusly gathered information to trace and retrieve works of art in Germany.
On this website, you will find provenance data and other information about the NK-collection compiled by the former Origins Unknown Agency (BHG). As of 1 January 2022, the database and website of the BHG have been transferred to the Cultural Heritage Agency. At the new portal of NK Collection you will find available and new information about characteristics, restitution status and provenance, brought together.
Zie de categorie Collection Nederlands Kunstbezit van Wikimedia Commons voor mediabestanden over dit onderwerp. |