France's Musée d'Orsay Hunts for Owners of Nazi-Looted Art; Masterpieces by Renoir, Degas May Have "Final Chance"
Paris's Musée d'Orsay is accelerating provenance research on Nazi-looted art and launching a permanent exhibit to identify and return works to owners.Summary
The Musée d'Orsay in Paris is managing 225 artworks with unknown ownership, looted or forcibly sold during World War II. After over 80 years, confirming owners has become difficult, so the museum formed an expert team in 2023 to investigate. Since May 2024, it has been displaying 13 works—including a Renoir portrait and a Degas painting owned by a Jewish collector murdered at Auschwitz—in a permanent exhibit titled "To Whom Do These Works Belong?" to seek clues about rightful owners. The French government has also expedited the process, passing a law in 2023 to simplify the return of state-owned cultural property. Recently, two Renoir works were returned to the heirs of a Jewish art dealer. A hearing on the return of a Van Gogh painting is scheduled for this autumn, though its full provenance remains unclear. The complex historical records from the chaotic war period pose significant challenges to the investigation, which experts describe as possibly the "last chance" to identify and return these works to their rightful owners.
(Source：読売新聞)