The Brit, the Met, the Louvre, the Prado and the Getty are among the great museums that have been in trouble over the provenance of their collections. And I don’t mean mere squabbles over attribution (“your Rembrandt was painted by his great uncle Frans”) or authenticity (“your Degas was painted by my uncle Fred”). I’m talking about the art regarded as looted – the paintings stolen or bought under duress from Nazi Germany’s Jewish families, and the mountains of ancient art souvenired by triumphant army generals, a venerable tradition honoured, if...
photo: creative commons
