A four-year review by more than 400 Dutch museums and galleries has turned up a list of 139 artworks that may have been forcibly taken from Jewish families during the Nazis' reign, the BBC reported on Tuesday. The works, which include a Matisse and several by Dutch artists, are listed on a special website. (An English version of the site won't be available until 2014.)
Heirs can file claims with the Dutch Restitutions Committee, an independent advisory panel. A previous review of museum collections examined only transactions that took place between 1940 and 1948. The new review, which was initiated in 2009, is an acknowledgment by the government that previous efforts to return looted property were incomplete. This latest search goes back to 1933, with an eye to gaps in provenance.
Speaking to the BBC, Siebe Weide, the director of the Netherlands Museums Association, said, “We know that there were doubtful transactions concerning works acquired before 1940, after Kristallnacht,†referring to the coordinated attacks on German and Austrian Jews that occurred in 1938.
