IFAR Journal

The edited and illustrated proceedings of a December 2018 IFAR Evening commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, including an analysis of how art restitution has changed in the intervening years. The four speakers included one of the organizers of the 1998 conference who was then U.S. Under Secretary of State; an art law attorney who has represented plaintiffs in several landmark Holocaust restitution cases; the International Director of Restitution at Christie’s; and a senior provenance specialist at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Dr. Sharon Flescher, IFAR’s Executive Director, moderated. The edited talks are followed by a panel discussion and Q&A.

The authors discuss IFAR’s research concerning a purported Stanton Macdonald-Wright Synchromist painting submitted to IFAR’s Authentication Research Service with an impressive provenance. Although on first glance the painting seemed to correspond with the artist’s works, examination revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of Synchromist color theory.

John Richardson, renowned Picasso biographer and a member of IFAR’s Board of Directors and Art Advisory Council for nearly 40 years, is remembered.

A report on April 15, 2019 the fire that destroyed the spire and roof of a cathedral that has stood in Paris for more than 800 years. Restoration funding, plans and concerns are discussed.

An update on a story reported previously in IFAR Journal. In December 2018, the French government allowed an export ban to be lifted on a painting, Judith Beheading Holofernes, which was discovered in Toulouse in 2014 and which some experts say is a Caravaggio. In 2016 the French Ministry of Culture issued a 30-month export ban while French experts tried to determine the painting’s authenticity, which is still in question. The article discusses the differing opinions.

An update on a legal case covered previously in IFAR Journal concerning the removal from a Sotheby’s sale of an ancient bronze Greek horse from the Howard and Saretta Barnet Collection after the Greek Ministry of Culture sent a letter asserting ownership. Issues include whether Greece had sufficient evidence to support its claim and whether an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act allows a suit against Greece to proceed in the U.S.

An update on a case covered previously in IFAR Journal concerning a lawsuit brought by Turkey against Christie’s auction house and the consignor, Michael Steinhardt, which resulted in the rescinding of the sale of an ancient sculpture of a female idol allegedly looted from Turkey in the 1960s.

An update on a long-running case, Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Found., covered previously in IFAR Journal. In April 2019, a federal district court judge in California ruled against the heirs of Lilly Cassirer Neubauer and in favor of the Thyssen Bornemisza Foundation in Madrid in an ownership dispute over Pissarro’s Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi-effet de pluie. The article discusses the ruling and background in detail, including the significance of the Spanish word “encubridor.”

The U.S. State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC) has approved 5-year extensions of bilateral agreements concerning the importation of cultural property at risk of pillage with three countries: Bulgaria, Honduras, and China, and is considering requests from Jordan and Chile.

Specialists determined that the painting Vase with Poppies, in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum since 1957, is an authentic Van Gogh. The original attribution to the artist was questioned by a Van Gogh specialist in 1990.

A final update on a case, Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, covered extensively in IFAR Journal since 2008. In May the Supreme Court decided not to review the Ninth Circuit’s July 2018 ruling that the painting can remain in the museum.

Stolen items include six works stolen in Houston, TX, including Pierre Bonnard’s Young Woman in a Black Hat and Fernand Léger’s Landscape with Red Rooster; two works by Takashi Murakami; Maxfield Parrish’s Ecstasy; Fernando Botero’s Rape of Europa.

Recovered items include Pablo Picasso’s Dora Maar, stolen in Antibes in 1999; Paul Signac’s Le Port de la Rochelle, stolen from the Musée des beaux-arts, Nancy, France in May 2018; Henry Bone’s Portrait of Col. The Hon. Francis Zheler Hood, stolen in Hampshire, England in 2008.