Between 1933 and 1945, the National Socialists abducted art and cultural assets across Europe in state-organised raids and thus stole them from their rightful owners. Many of these objects have still not been restituted, which is why many artworks of unknown provenance are still circulating on the international art market or are held in private and public collections.[1] However, the restitution of cultural assets seized as a result of persecution has not received the same level of attention everywhere: collections such as that of Cornelius Gurlitt in Germany, for example, were kept hidden for a long time (until 2012) and thus removed from any public discourse.

Prior to this – in November 1998 – the Washington Convention took a significant step towards uncovering unlawful spoliation: it was agreed internationally to actively conduct research in order to find out more about the origin, i.e. provenance, of the looted and expropriated works of art in museums’ collections. The aim was to find the rightful owners who had been aggrieved by the Nazis or, if impossible, their heirs, and to find restitution solutions in the sense of a “just and fair solution”[2]. This search for solutions should also be seen as a ‘countermovement’ to dispel the shadow of oblivion that has settled over the past of the objects and their rightful owners by focusing on the background. Ultimately, it is not only the provenance of the objects that has created a ‘right-wing space’ around them; it is also the way in which the generations since the Second World War have chosen to deal with this burdened and incriminating history. 

Photo: Maria Eichhorn’s exhibition Restitution Policy, 2003/04 at the Lenbachhaus in Munich.[3]

German artist Maria Eichhorn also dealt with the subject of looted art and the restoration of ownership of these works of art in her exhibition Restitution Policy at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, Germany, in 2003/04. Eichhorn shed light on the provenance of fifteen oil paintings and one watercolour from the collection of the gallery in the Lenbachhaus: these were not hung on the wall, but stood on wooden pedestals so that the front and back were visible.[4] The artist wanted to address the question of ownership, as it is above all the backs of the paintings with their inscriptions, markings and stickers that reveal the original ownership.

Recto and verso of Theodor Leopold Weller’s Portrait of a Girl, c. 1820, as shown in Eichhorn’s exhibition Restitution Policy at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, 2003.[5]

However, she was not only interested in a documentary reappraisal, but also in developing an artistic methodology that makes it possible to illustrate the heterogeneous levels of meaning that works of art can acquire as objects of real history and the target of various ownership claims.[6] Maria Eichhorn thus also investigated the fundamental institutional and cultural-political processes, which are not only characteristic of the situation of the museum collection in the Lenbachhaus, but in the course of decolonisation in the institutions are probably also seen as a permanent task for other museums, as current developments – for example in Switzerland at Kunsthaus Zurich – show.

Although not a legally binding declaration, the ratification of the Washington Convention in 1998 laid down how to deal with art seized as a result of Nazi persecution in the future, with the focus initially on identification (provenance research) and subsequent reparation (restitution). However, in the implementation of these principles over the past twenty-five years of their validity – despite the use of various dispute resolution mechanisms to resolve ownership issues – it has become clear that the question of the legitimacy (worthiness of recognition) of restitution by no means ends with provenance research and restitution. This was demonstrated not only by Maria Eichhorn’s exhibition Restitution Policy, but also by the debates that have arisen around the topic since. The desire to publicly engage with the history and memories in this context on the basis of witness objects has become a desire that now overshadows almost everything. The works in question are historically burdened and politicised, which ultimately restricts an unclouded view of them. Demands to “create or expand understanding of the political and racist baggage that haunted this period of 20th century art” become understandable and increasingly shape public discourse.[7] In addition, the desire for the “necessity of publication in an exhibition form that shows both the results and the works themselves” is being fuelled, as Maria Eichhorn put it in an interview with Adam Szymczyk in 2017 in the run-up to documenta 14.[8]

With a view to the restitution of cultural property seized as a result of Nazi persecution in the sense of a “just and fair solution”, the authors believe that the dimension of legitimacy takes centre stage, which must be underpinned by the following indispensable elements:

1. public interest and discourse

2. voluntariness and willingness

3. provenance research and clarification

4. contextualisation 

5. transparency

6. completeness.

The fact that there must be a fundamental interest on the part of the public has already been demonstrated above. The Washington Declaration, to which forty-four states agreed, is a necessary basis for recognition and, with its voluntary, moral commitment, makes it clear what an important role the public plays here. A comprehensive discourse can impose the pressure that is often required. Artistic debates, such as Eichhorn’s exhibition Restitution Politics at the Lenbachhaus or her exhibition contribution The Rose Valland Institute at documenta 14 in Kassel in 2017, contribute to uncovering historical events and power-based processes, and offer the general public the opportunity to familiarise themselves with such topics and do memory work. In her participation in documenta, Eichhorn even went one step further by calling on the public – via an open call on the subject of “unlawful ownership” – to “research whether their inherited property contains Nazi-looted goods” and offering research support.[9] Eichhorn’s 2022 Venice Biennale contribution, presented in the German Pavilion, also took up the history of the exhibition venue, which was converted by the Nazi state in 1938; she subjected the architecture of National Socialist rule to an examination in order to subsequently uncover its structures and thus traces of the past.[10] In this context, the importance of public discourse becomes clear: the way in which an exhibition is curated can make an intrinsic contribution to the debate.

Maria Eichhorn’s project Relocating a Structure in the German Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale[11]

Another indispensable element is the voluntary nature and willingness of the institutions and individuals involved. Although this has already taken place to some extent at a national or international level with exhibitions such as the 2017 documenta in Kassel or the national Biennale Pavilion in Venice in 2022, even renowned institutions shy away from fully uncovering underlying conflicts and making them visible, which would allow artworks to be read as carriers of meaning and interpretation.[12] Cases such as that of the Curt Glaser Collection at Kunstmuseum Basel show that processes are often only set in motion by external pressures, which in each case represent a tough struggle and cannot usually be successfully concluded within a short period of time. It took over a decade – the restitution claim was rejected as unjustified in 2008 after lengthy investigations[13] – until the Kunstmuseum Basel reached an agreement with Glaser’s heirs in 2017: Museum Basel was able to keep the artworks, but had to compensate the heirs with an extensive exhibition on Curt Glaser and financial compensation. Ultimately, being proactive here also means not only wanting to provide financial resources for the restitution itself, but also having a sufficient budget in advance to finance human resources for provenance research, or ideally to set up a provenance research department – as Kunstmuseum Basel did in 2017, for example, in the course of the restitution of the Curt Glaser collection. There has certainly been a change in existing self-perceptions in recent years.

Of course, provenance research and clarification as such takes on one of the most fundamental roles and should also be seen as the starting point for contextualisation, which is also an important element in the legitimacy considerations. As part of her exhibition at the Lenbachhaus in 2003/04, Maria Eichhorn developed an artistic methodology that “could potentially be applied as a model of clarification to all unsolved cases” and suggested that “the artwork is transformed into a testimony or analytical object and at the same time [is] linked to concrete provenance research in order to both determine its status and initiate a possible restitution [that] is not tied to a specific location and collection”.[14] Provenance research as a procedure is, however, also characterised by the respective context and claim that an institution and the persons involved have set as their goal. The Kunsthaus Zurich only announced a new approach to works by previous Jewish owners in March 2023, and is investing one million Swiss francs in the newly adopted provenance research strategy over the next few years to enable a systematic review of this part of the collection. By contrast, the Bührle Foundation, whose works have been housed at the Kunsthaus Zurich since 2021, considers the provenance of its works to have already been clarified: the art historian Lukas Gloor, who was also the director of the Bührle Foundation, worked on the collection from 2002 to 2021 and publicly stated that Emil Bührle had not left behind a Nazi art collection. At the same time, he resigned in 2021 when the City of Zurich announced that the works on loan from the Bührle collection were to be examined independently. The aim was to clarify whether the E. G. Bührle Collection Foundation had conducted its provenance research properly and presented the results correctly.

This brings us to contextualisation, another element that is needed in order to ensure legitimacy. In addition to the question of what is presented, the way in which it is presented is also highly relevant. In order for the looted or unlawfully obtained objects to act as carriers of meaning, they must be presented appropriately in exhibitions. It is often not enough to exhibit the object alone; it is important that the curation is enriched with files, photographs and reports from contemporary witnesses, so that its level of meaning as a tool of Nazi injustice is revealed. This can mean that the art historical importance of a work of art may – at least temporarily – fade into the background. It is then up to the curators to choose a suitable form of presentation, in order to provide visitors with information on the various levels of meaning of the objects, as Maria Eichhorn’s exhibition contributions have already made clear.

Central to the credibility and sincerity of curatorial efforts in terms of contextualisation is the careful consideration of the informative and physical space given to the perpetrators (or collectors) and victims in the exhibition.[15] In the case of the new presentation of the Bührle Collection at Kunsthaus Zurich – which has been on display since November 2023 – it is noticeable, for example, that the photos and texts about Bührle’s career, the development of his collection and his political and social ties with the Zurich elite of his time (in particular with the artists’ society that still runs the Kunsthaus today) take up a great deal of space. The life stories of the Jewish people who were the previous legal owners of some of Bührle’s collection objects, on the other hand, are contained within a small text panel and one or two family photos placed next to the respective work, often leaving the public with the impression of a marginal note or footnote. Moving the ‘perpetrator-related’ information into the digital realm, so that it could be called up using QR codes, for example, would be a possible solution here.

It has already been made clear in the comments on provenance research and clarification that it only makes sense to investigate the provenance of controversial objects or those proven to have been unlawfully acquired if the investigations are conducted by independent researchers and financed by neutral donors. The results of the research must be published comprehensively and with objective openness. If an institution allows censorship or editorial interference by stakeholders, it makes itself untrustworthy and destroys the positive effect of provenance research. This became clear in the report “War transactions, capital and Kunsthaus. The emergence of the Bührle Collection in a historical context”,[16] which historian Prof. Matthieu Leimgruber from the University of Zurich was commissioned to write by the City and Canton of Zurich in August 2017. In 2020, Erich Keller, who was involved in the research project, raised accusations against the steering committee of the project. It had allowed the then director of the Bührle Foundation, Lukas Gloor, to have formulations in the report changed by Leimgruber in order to present Bührle in a more favourable light.[17] Transparency and completeness are therefore two further important elements that are required in order to gain recognition. The aspect of completeness was also discussed by Maria Eichhorn, Alexander Alberro and Adam Szymczyk in 2017 in the run-up to documenta 14, when it came to the question of whether the Gurlitt Collection should be presented there in its entirety. Given the remarkable size of the estate, this seemed practically impossible, and yet it became clear in the discussion that breaking the collection up into small parts could encourage accusations of concealment and suppression.[18]

Restitution and restitution intentions are and will remain an extremely multi-layered and complex undertaking. However, the authors follow Maria Eichhorn’s argument that documenta – and thus, in a broader sense, platforms such as museums and similar institutions –must always be seen as social links that belong to that core area of a civil society in which its self-image is shaped and further developed. In the light of legitimacy, the voluntariness and willingness that must be expected from institutions and other initiatives appear all the more important. In the context of cultural assets confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution, the aim must be to promote the transformation of existing self-images. The way in which burdened and incriminating history has been dealt with for a long time must be countered. The role of curation probably lies less in provenance research and clarification itself. However, there is a need for interaction, not only in terms of transparency and completeness. With a view to public discourse and contextualisation, curation can play a key role in helping to clarify and restore the ownership of these artworks. Only when the full historical circumstances surrounding the unlawful or amoral acquisition of the objects have been researched, presented and understood will we be able to make the artworks shine again.

Fabienne Dubs, MA, is the curator and assistant head of the Art Collection of the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland. She studied art history and history at the University of Zurich UZH. She has closely followed the developments and discourse surrounding the Bührle Collection and its move to Kunsthaus Zurich ever since her BA thesis in 2015/16, which centred on some artworks that Bührle acquired through questionable means. Her master’s thesis on the construction of Zurich Town Hall focused on questions of early modern representations of sovereignty through room and frontage schedules and the ordering of guild assignments. Between September 2023 and May 2024, Dubs completed the CAS Curating at Zurich University of Applied Arts (ZHdK).

Jana Kurth, MA, is an independent curator, researcher and consultant. Passionate about art that explores social change in its historical context, human rights, culture and identity, she works at the Center of Human Rights at the University of Zurich. Her academic journey includes a master’s degree in curating from Zurich University of Applied Arts (ZHdK) and prior studies at the University of Art and Design Lucerne. Jana Kurth also holds a master’s in business administration from the University of Rostock, Germany. Her background as an artist, coupled with her extensive managerial expertise in both the non-profit and the private sector, provides her with a nuanced perspective that enriches not just her curatorial work but also her analytical approach to developments and discourses on the topic of restitution and provenance research.