Word: museume
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Gerrit Dou's Astronomer by Candlelight is familiar to any fan of 17th-century Dutch masters. But if a recent claim by heirs to one of the most prominent World War II-era Dutch art dealers succeeds, Dou's painting will be taken from Leiden's De Lakenhal Museum and returned to the family of Nathan Katz. In all, Katz' four children are claiming 225 paintings and two tapestries from museums and institutions throughout the Netherlands...
...These are quite important collector paintings," says De Lakenhal's chief curator Christiaan Vogelaar of the seven disputed works at his museum. Although his museum has returned art stolen or purchased by the Nazis before, Vogelaar says the Katz claim came as a surprise. "People thought it was over because of the settlement after the war," says Vogelaar, referring to the 28 paintings returned to the Katz family in the 1940s. They include Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man, which is thought to have been bartered by Nathan in exchange for visas for his extended family and his mother...
...have been reported on by the Committee. The government has so far followed the Committee's advice in all cases, some 75 percent favorably resolved for the claimants. "They've made a big effort to make right what was done wrong," says Joel Cahen, Director of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam. Ministry of Culture spokesman Bob van het Klooster says people can submit claims indefinitely, although they expect the Katz' are the last of the big claims. "There aren't any more big art dealers left who had to flee...
...museums that stand to lose some of their most prized works, it's all a tad bittersweet. The Frans Hal Museum in Haarlem has eight Golden Century paintings from the Katz collection on long-term loan from the national collection. They are works of "enormous importance," says Louis Pirenne, the museum's head of public affairs. "Paintings like these are important to the mid-scale museums in the Netherlands. We buy around these centerpieces in our collection." Although the loss would be huge, Pirenne says his museum respects the judgments of the Restitution Committee. "We've always realized...
...those who’ve seen pictures of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, actually arriving there can be a confusing experience. I had expected the surroundings to match Daniel Libeskind’s jagged zinc zig-zag of a building. As unlikely as such a construction might be in other cities, Berlin loves its cutting-edge architecture. And the museum fell along the border between the eastern and western parts of the city, suggesting that it might be part of one of the many deconstructionist paradises that sprang up on land formerly occupied by the Berlin Wall. Instead...