The Berlin masterpieces in America : paintings, politics, and the Monuments Men / Peter Jonathan Bell and Kristi A. Nelson ; with contributions by Tanja Bernsau, Kathryn Griffith, Neville Rowley, and Nancy Yeide.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bell, Peter Jonathan, author.

Nelson, Kristi (Kristi A.), author.

Contributor:

Cincinnati Art Museum, organizer, host institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Painting, European--Exhibitions.

Painting, European.

Masterpieces from the Berlin Museums (Exhibition) (1948-1949 : United States).

Masterpieces from the Berlin Museums (Exhibition).

Traveling exhibitions--Political aspects United States--History--20th century.

Traveling exhibitions.

Cultural property--Moral and ethical aspects.

Cultural property.

Cultural property--Repatriation.

Genre:

Exhibition catalogs.

History.

Paper onlays (Binding).

Physical Description:

224 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cincinnati : Cincinnati Art Museum ; Lewes, UK : in association with D Giles Limited, 2020.

Summary:

This exhibition catalogue focuses on the transfer of 202 paintings from the Berlin State Museums-including many of the greatest 15th to 18th-century works in the Gemäldegalerie-to the United States in the aftermath of World War II. In November 1945, the U.S. military government in Germany ordered that "at least 200 German works of art of greatest importance" be sent to Washington for safekeeping. After two years in storage, they were exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and in thirteen other cities across the country in 1948-49, before returning to Germany. The essays in the catalogue explore the controversy that surrounded this transfer of patrimony, as well as the reception of the paintings themselves in the United States. At the heart of the book is Walter I. Farmer, who served in the US Army as a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives officer-a 'Monuments Man'-and as Director of the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point (1945-46), which housed thousands of artworks recovered at the end of the war. Farmer is responsible for the Wiesbaden Manifesto, which protested the shipment of paintings to the United States and was signed by two-thirds of the Monuments officers active in Europe. Following the war, he was a resident of Cincinnati and stalwart supporter of the arts in the region for almost fifty years.

Contents:

Sold and stolen : the use and abuse of paintings in Nazi Germany and during World War II / Peter Jonathan Bell

Map : the movements of the "202"

Walter Farmer and the Central Collecting Point in Wiesbaden / Tanja Bernsau

Making art history : the masterpieces' postwar tour / Kristi A. Nelson

The road (back) to Berlin : the endless journey of the "202" / Neville Rowley

Walter Ings Farmer : memories of a life

What's past is prologue : provenance research in American museums / Nancy Yeide

Catalogue

Appendix : paintings from the Berlin museums.

Notes:

"This catalog accompanies the exhibition Paintings, Politics, and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America on display at Cincinnati Art Museum, June 26, 2020-September 6, 2020"--Colophon.

Includes bibliography (pages 215-219) and index.

Local Notes:

Bound in blue cloth with a photographic onlay.

Athenaeum copy: Beardwood Fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9781911282631

1911282638

OCLC:

1138996543