IU Art Museum studies controversial ownership history of paintings

Going once, going twice -- halt?\nOn Nov. 8, despite a favorable verdict from U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff, Christie's auction house in London stopped the auction of the Picasso painting, "Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto," that was expected to sell for $40 million to $60 million. \nIn a news release, the judge said he needed to decide whether the Nazis forced the painting's former Jewish owner to sell it during World War II. Though he found no evidence to support the claim, the case caused much controversy and the sale was halted.\nThis issue of ownership affects almost every facet of the art world, and the topic is being explored on campus at the IU Art Museum with its "provenance project." \nJenny McComas, curator of pre-1800 Western art at the museum, said provenance refers to the ownership history of the work of art. Staff at the IU Art Museum and several graduate students have been working for the past 2 1/2 years to trace the origins of select pieces from their collection. They find and document the ownership records from each artwork's creation to its current home.\nMcComas said besides the Nazis, American and British soldiers also looted paintings in the chaos of war. This is how some paintings ended up in the United States.\nIn doing this research, the museum hopes to fill any gaps in the artwork's provenance to ensure that a work of art has not been stolen and that any and all transactions between the owners of each artwork were legal.\n"We are not thinking that anything was stolen, but we are looking at what may have been during the Europe era," McComas said. "We are looking at European art -- paintings highly valued by the Nazis."\nMcComas said the Nazis typically did not care about fine-arts prints such as etching or wood cuts. Many Nazis, including Adolf Hitler and other leaders, had personal art collections and were interested in collecting works by old masters, from the Italian Renaissance to the 17th century. Nazis went through private collections in Europe, looting and forcing Jewish gallery owners to sell works to various members of the Nazi party for low prices.\n"People who were trying to flee Europe sold art they owned to raise money and sold things for a very low value," McComas said.\nMcComas, who is in charge of research, said the process is very time consuming. It begins with looking at the physical object and the labels and any inscriptions on the back of the piece. After photographing and recording all information, researchers look through all the various files at the museum to find information about when and where the piece was purchased for the museum and any exhibition notes. \nAfter making sense of all the gathered information and exhausting all the museum's resources, researchers turn to the library to examine different catalogs and archives.\nMcComas said the museum has looked through various papers of Herman B Wells because of the many art pieces Wells donated from his personal collection.\n"We find in papers, the sales receipts and records, where and when Herman B Wells purchased the artwork," McComas said.\nHis papers and those of many other IU professors and administrators are preserved at the IU Archives. \nThe researchers have been working to display their findings on a Web site, which is linked to the IU Art Museum home page. \nMcComas said the Web site receives good feedback. People around the world use it, she said.\n"The international networking tool has been very useful," McComas said.\nThe Web site also strives to make provenance available to the public. Any family can use the Internet to search for paintings that may belong to them but have not yet been returned. McComas said a lot of artwork is still illegally floating around and there is a big push to fix the situation.\n"We have a much better grasp of the history of the paintings in our collection," McComas said. "We've filled in a lot of gaps and we made a large stride."\nMcComas said that "Travelers in a Landscape," depicting a 17th-century Dutch landscape, by artists Jan Hackaert and Adriaen Van De Velde, is a piece in the collection that had very little known information regarding its history when the research begain. \nThrough research in the past year, McComas said the museum now knows where the painting was every minute from 1800 until 1924.\n"There is nothing that we suspect that was taken by the Nazis. However, there are so many gaps in our knowledge at this point," McComas said. "What we do is rectify the past and illegalities for anybody to have in their possession a work of art that was previously stolen or illegally transferred," McComas said. "I am really pleased that work is going on and there are so many restitutions"