Stolen Artworks Still Turning Up

Hi-

I just read an online article I wanted to blog about. I want to give attribution to the chron.com website with information from WFAA-TV.

After all these years the Nazis are still in the news unfortunately. They stole a lot of art from families and museums across Europe during their reign of terror way back when. Of course, they did worse things than that.

Still it was outrageous, but some of the stolen works are now turning up.

According to the article, three famous stolen paintings have turned up at Southern Methodist University (SMU) art museum in Dallas, of all places. Robert Edsel, founder of an arts preservation group (in Dallas), ran across photos of a couple of paintings taken in Deutschland in 1945 just before the war ended and thought one was similar to one he had seen at SMU.

The painting is Santa Justa by Bartolome Estaban Murillo and is valued about $10-15 million US.

Those at the museum are working with experts in Europe to see if they can track true ownership of the painting after it was confiscated and given back to the Rothschild family. The museum claims proper documentation.

It turns out two other paintings at SMU also had the tell-tale Nazi numbering system on their stretcher bars. The article says that considering the paintings are so well known in the art world, the Rothschild family surely would have taken steps to retrieve them if the museum wasn’t the rightful owner.

There are still hundreds of thousands of stolen artworks missing.

Good for Mr. Edsel and his foundation in helping to find and/or return these works of art.

Until next blog...