The #Louvre Museum is putting 31 paintings on permanent display in an effort to find the rightful owners of those and other works of art looted by #Nazis during World War II.
The #Paris museum opened two showrooms last month to display the paintings, which are among thousands of works of art looted by German forces in France between 1940 and 1945.
More than 45,000 objects have been handed back to their rightful owners since the war, but more than 2,000 remain unclaimed, including 296 paintings stored at the Louvre. .
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“These paintings don’t belong to us. Museums often looked like predators in the past, but our goal is to return them,” Sebastien Allard, the head of the paintings department at the Louvre, told The AP. “The large majority of the retrieved artworks have been plundered from #Jewish families during World War II. Beneficiaries can see these artworks, declare that these artworks belong to them, and officially ask for their return.” .
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The paintings in the new showrooms are from various artists of different eras and horizons, including a remarkable landscape from Theodore Rousseau, “La Source du Lizon.” Other more famous looted works had already been on display in the museum, but visitors did not necessarily know they had been stolen by the Nazis. In museums, pieces of art retrieved by the French authorities are identified with the label “MNR,” French initials for National Museums Recovery. .
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“We needed to draw attention further to the matter and raise public awareness,” said Allard. “We thought it was important to highlight the specific case of these works, which are not listed on our inventories.” .
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The Louvre initiative is the latest effort by #French authorities to find heirs of families who lost their artwork. A working group set up by the Culture Ministry is in charge of tracing back the origins of the art and identifying owners. But it’s a long and laborious task: only some 50 pieces have been returned since 1951. .
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“They need to find old family pictures and payment slips, or gather testimonies. It can take years.”