Original subtitles

hello everyone before we get started

this afternoon just a quick reminder if

you have a cell phone now is the time to

silence it and also just a reminder that

photography is not permitted in the

auditorium thank you good afternoon and

welcome to Sunday at the Met the

monuments men fact and fiction the

recent release of the monuments men

feature film has renewed interest and

appreciation for the efforts of the two

hundred and forty-five men and women who

volunteered for service and the

monuments Fine Arts and Archives program

during World War two this distinguished

group of individuals included James

rorimer who authored survival the

salvage and protection of art and war

and eventually became the Metropolitan

museum's director from 1955 to 1966 in

conjunction with the film the museum has

produced monuments men at the mint

treasures saved during World War two

this itinerary which is available here

in the auditorium and at information

desks throughout the museum allows you

the visitor to discover eleven works of

art that narrowly escaped destruction

and were restituted to their rightful

owners it is because of the actions of

the monuments men that these important

paintings are today part of the Mets

collection this afternoon we are joined

by distinguished group of presenters who

are going to explore various aspects of

the work of the monuments men our first

presenter is lynn h nicholas who is an

independent researcher in the area of

nazi error social and cultural policy

she's the author of the rape of Europa

the fate of Europe's treasures in the

Third Reich and the Second World War

which received the National Book Critics

Circle Award in 1995 the book is also

the basis for the documentary film of

the same title

in addition Lynne is also testified

before Congress on restitution related

issues and I really cannot think of

anyone better to join us today to

provide an overview of the conditions

that were encountered by the monuments

men as they went about the business of

protecting art please join me now with

the war

welcome forlán h [ __ ]

thank you very much and I would very

much like to thank the Metropolitan for

organizing this series of lecture s and

it's really a very great honor to be

here at the Museum which played such a

central part in the recovery and

protection of works of art during and

after World War two by now I'm sure

you've all maybe seen the movie directed

by George Clooney sorry I better go back

so you can and we only hope that this

production will generate public

enthusiasm for the continuing need for

specialized training in the handling of

cultural heritage for today's forces

because we do have monuments men still

it wasn't really any easier before World

War two that it is now to promote such

training and the success of the

operation was a very great part due to

the officers of this and other American

museums and this is a one small group of

them I don't know if Charles Kuhn is in

there but you can look in the tall one

sort of second from the left in the back

is John Nicholas Brown whose son would

later become director of the National

Gallery of Art in early July 1943

sailing where the expeditionary force

headed for the beaches of Sicily the

famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle

wrote that quote everything in this

world has stopped except war and we were

all men of a new profession out in a

strange night now this statement applied

especially to the military experience of

the tiny

number of art specialists most of them

experts in their own professions who

were attached the Allied armies and who

would come ashore soon after the main

invasion forces the fact that they were

art specialists officers at all and the

Allied armies was really something of a

miracle the British and American

commands had been distinctly reluctant

to a lot a lot precious resources to

frills like that feeling that the

existing rules of land warfare were

sufficient protection for works of art

now this thinking was based on British

experiences in North Africa where a

number of professional archaeologists

who happened to be in the armies they'd

been drafted as where most of the

American ones they seemed to be dealing

perfectly well in an informal way with

any problems and the British called this

approach muddling through the main

activity had consisted of protecting

ancient monuments from graffiti minded

soldiers this is in Leptis Magna and

stopping souvenir seekers in reviving

the brothers shell-shocked local museum

authorities but the american museum

establishment which had been receiving

intelligence from colleagues in europe

for some time knew the conditions when

in the main part of europe would be far

more complex the idea of placing

specialist art officers within the armed

forces was inspired in great part by

george staudte you'll see a lot of

pictures of him today who was at the

time a conservator at the Fogg Museum at

Harvard he wasn't the only one who had

these ideas a number of art people had

come up with similar thoughts and whilst

out was mainly interested in

conservation which you'll hear about

later from Rachel Carr colleague who

will talk about that aspect of things

after me other people like the directors

of the National Gallery of Art I love

this picture it looks like

they were actually and Frances Henry

Taylor who was the director of the

Metropolitan Museum at the time were all

concerned about looting and repatriation

of displaced movable objects so after

months of lobbying these men were able

to persuade President Roosevelt in the

Congress that dedicated specialists

would be needed to be embedded I think

as the new word as they say nowadays to

secure the unprecedented numbers of

movable cultural objects like these

bells taken from French churches they

were going to be melted down for bullets

and stuff works like this it known to

have been displaced in Europe since the

Nazis had come to power a Presidential

Commission the Roberts Commission was

also created to advise and support the

art specialists but unfortunately would

not begin to its operations until after

the invasion of Sicily so that the

officers who were first sent there like

Mason Hammond who was on the left and

James rorimer later director of the Met

here had little very little preparation

or backup for what they were doing all

Hammond had when he arrived in Sicily

was an Italian Automobile Club handbook

and a knowledge of classical Latin and

he really did pretty well even so back

home the preparations being made by the

art establishment were slowly completed

David Finley director of the National

Gallery of Art and an ultimate

government insider performed miracles of

diplomacy in reconciling disparate

elements and like the military and New

York dealer George Wilton Stein who gave

rather condescending arty advice to the

Army that was not always very well

received and the documents of that

highly amusing the Frick library here

turned over its entire resources to the

war effort and they made small booklets

with lists and locations the most

important monuments in Italy and

province by province and the for

distribution to frontline units and a

one-page emergency first aid manual for

buildings and objects was printed

eventually they made special maps like

this one for the Air Force bomba dears

and you see the little white things at

the top or things they're not supposed

to mrs. Florence not supposed to bomb

like the Duomo etc but down in the in

the lower part or Florence was had very

big railroad yards and and in an

extraordinary bombing raid during the

war they they did bomb the railroad

yards and not they didn't hit a single

thing in the rest of the city but this

is our where they're also doing

precision bombing without hitting you

know some of the great monuments but

mistakes were inevitably made this is

the building with the Last Supper in

Milan that that barely survived a hit on

the building by the time of d-day there

was much more information and there were

many more mint monuments men like Lamont

Moore and their three hundred and forty

of them so there we can't show them all

but it was an extraordinary group lots

of people wanted to go Frances Henry

Taylor wanted to go with the alignments

man but he was too fast to get in the

army

edith standin i love this picture who

much later a monuments woman much later

would be in the tapestry department here

at the met and i believe a matter of the

present director joined the wax and got

herself transferred to the right places

so there was a lot of interest in doing

this duty continuing efforts at home

would manage to transfer a small stream

of the already grabbed at

specialists from jobs where they were

useful the conservators Stout was

working on airplane paint two jobs where

they were expert but army life is not

easy for them they were low in rank much

more so than their British counterparts

this is Lincoln Christine who you may

recognize the famous famous in New York

for example never became an officer was

a private for most of the time and all

efforts to change this were to no avail

from the Army side some people like

stout and Charles Parkhurst had been

transferred from the Navy and they

weren't attached to any specific unit a

bureaucratic issue that often meant that

they couldn't get food uniforms or

lodging because they didn't belong to

the right unit and they were also

frequently denied transportation which

made their jobs of inspecting and

securing objects very difficult indeed

Charles Park is known as CP in the art

world did manage to get a jeep and this

is one of the few so look at it

carefully because that was a treasure

beyond all helps to have your own Jeep

in their required war Diaries all the

monuments men give lots of space to the

intrigues necessary to secure the

battered vehicles which they used to

cross most of Europe and then jeeps all

had wonderful names like Hammonds peril

Lucky thirteen things like that to

Americans then is now accepted in New

York of course and being on foot was

suspicious James rorimer at the time a

curator here at The Cloisters was

appropriately sent to the famed Abbey of

Sammys shell to protect what he could

from drunken US soldiers who were on

driving jeeps up and down the steep

narrow streets and also to dislodge a

British general his paramour who taken

up residence in a protected building but

he was pulled aside and detained he's

walking around detained for several

hours and accused of being spy by MPs

who were suspicious of his lack of

transportation and his you know his

vague connection to any specific unit

after d-day as had been true in Italy no

one could save things that were in the

direct line of battle this is just

behind the lines of Normandy it's can

and the retreating Germans were by now

perfectly aware of the Allied desire to

preserve national monuments and

deliberately use them as ammo dumps and

observation points captured buildings

that were too unstable for safety were

demolished by the engineers here they

showed us them blowing up a tower after

which all the monuments do was try to

persuade them not to use the rubble for

road fill to fill potholes and things

and and to you know try to find the bits

and pieces to put back together in

general in occupied Europe occupied by

the Nazis that is movable works of art

fared better and the monuments men to

their relief found the repositories of

the great European collections

containing all of their extraordinary

things safe and under the control of

local cultural authorities mrs. James

rorimer looks James rorimer

on the left and she remembers em from

the Louvre and that's a they take things

to Lille for safekeeping away from Paris

and they have just liberated that

repository destruction wasn't the only

problem during the rapid advance across

Northern Europe the problems of

billeting troops arose

as one soldier commented if you've been

in combat and then you come into a

beautiful room with a chandelier you

simply have to shoot at it the great

royal residents of France were not

exempt for instance American troops

bivouacked at Fontainebleau held

amphibious drills for the Rhine crossing

in its magnificent pools and canals and

had to be restrained and it was no easy

thing for a lowly lieutenant like

rorimer to keep anyone with higher rank

and almost everybody had a higher rank

than he did but to keep these people

with delusions of grandeur from

installing themselves in a palace

luckily a lot of the monuments men had

been dealing with museum trustees and

donors for years than women were not

easily intimidated and the documents

make very amusing reading the following

occurred at the Chateau Grove WA a very

beautiful place not far from Paris where

the owner Prince Godfrey tutored our

Jean had offered 15 us officers lodgings

as his contribution to the war effort

now this was against regulations but one

of the officers had accepted and his

exploitation of the hospitality was a

bit over the top and rorimer tried to

persuade him to leave and this is an

excerpt from Norma's diary

and I quote captain Beasley was very

unpleasant about historic buildings when

I explained to him the reason for my

visit he was still in his bath at 11:30

- electric heaters were going in one

room and another was in his bedroom

there were three bottles of cognac on

his dresser and a box with about a dozen

wine bottles on the floor when I

explained the situation of the famous

building and magnificent collections and

that might happen that the general would

not want the Chateau used by our forces

and view of existing directives which

I've placed in evidence captain Beasley

told his colleague to be sure to get my

name

and said that if the general ordered him

to move out he would move out and then

in

I made no further comment but captain

Beasley you'll be glad to hear was

eventually evicted but it did take some

doing and that sort of thing happened

quite a lot it wasn't until they reached

Paris of course that the monuments men

and others would begin to understand the

methods and magnitude of Nazi looting

this is rorimer and the grant gallery of

the louvre and that's where the Mona

Lisa would normally hang they they

written in chalk on the walls the places

where everything was supposed to be and

they'd all been evacuated to the South

of France

the liberation of Paris was quite an

extraordinary thing New Yorker Alexandra

Rosenberg the son of the dealer Paul

Rosenberg who had moved to Paris in 1941

would arrive in Paris in time to

liberate a train and this is the real

train full of art the Nazis had tried to

take at the last minute in which were a

considerable number of works that had

belonged to his own family

the train was only one that many that

had already left and there is another

movie about the Train and Rosa belong

but what happened and this the Clooney

movies is not quite accurate but the

Train really did exist much of the

information about the Nazi operations

would come from Rosa by long a mousy but

courageous minor functionary of this

year the poem the small museum which

used to have all the Impressionists

where Goering used to like to go

shopping he went 22 times to pick out

things the jeu de Paume had been taken

over by the Germans as the main storage

and processing area for the thousands of

works they looted from Jews and friends

miss von Wong who unbeknownst to the

Nazis spoke German had kept a secret

record of where the

were being sent in the right and just

who they belonged to

and eventually would turn that over to

James rorimer and other American

officials but Nazi looting was in stark

contrast to the more haphazard Allied

operations because the Nazi impetus had

come from Hitler himself who envisioned

nothing less than the complete

rearrangement of all the works of art in

Europe in accordance with Nazi ideology

the Nazi didn't just loot they bought

things on a vast scale on the market

this is a Premier's famous artist in his

studio the bond of the Sheridan family

that was bought in Austria and they

created a huge boom in the wartime art

market there were four major well-funded

bureaucracies including the SS who

specially specialized in archeology you

see Himmler there in the middle at a dig

a little bit dressed up anyway they

concerned themselves almost exclusively

with art matters and they were supported

by the full force of Nazi military and

police organizations Hitler's agency

alone which employed batches of dealers

like Hildebrand Gurlitt who we've a

recent notoriety would spend more than

20 million World War two dollars on art

and Goering I love this picture baring

was a close second another entity the ER

are in France confiscated the cultural

possessions of alien races of Jews this

is a repository of Jewish books and of

the church treasures of poles because

the poles were Slavs which is also an

alien race so there were the churches of

Poland were stripped of their treasures

- this happened in both the eastern and

western theaters and they kept what was

ideologically suitable for the Nazi

leaders and sold off what they didn't

want such as degenerate

and this Matisse which which had just

turned up in the Gerlich collection to

select bunches of dealers that sort of

surrounded this looting organization in

Paris this one was not recovered after

the war and somehow got to mr. garlotte

but it was he wasn't the original dealer

who got it from Goering by the time the

monuments men and ladies here's rose by

law and he did stand them together at

one of the collecting points by the time

they arrived in Germany both the loupe

taken from the conquered nations and the

German national collections have been

put into several thousand shelters most

like this one and most famous was of

these was the salt mine and I'll say

which had been fitted up for Hitler's

acquisitions and there a lot of nice

stuff like the Rothschild astronomer and

by Vermeer but there are many other

mines and hiding places just as

important like Heilbronn and of course

Berchtesgaden where Goering had said

several train loads of art and luxury

booths here an extraordinary picture of

his one of his trains being unloaded by

the 101st airborne then of course there

was the fairy castle of neuschwanstein

that held tens of thousands of objects

looted from france including the

Rothschild jewels being examined by

James rorimer again here and it was this

was a very remote place and it was quite

hard to get them out of the

we can all sympathize with this picture

considering the weather in the last

month the monuments men never got to

Berlin before the setup of the Soviet

zone but they came close and by the time

the two armies met news that Soviet art

specialists the so-called trophy of the

gates were stripping the areas they

controlled bear all artworks led to a

wild scramble by the British and

Americans to get everything they could

back to their own zone that happened

particularly it's in the film at the

mind of Merkers which had tons of art

mostly from German museums but also the

the entire gold reserves of Germany the

issue soon became how to store all these

things the surreal landscape of Germany

this is all and the bombing had been

vicious there had little functioning

government was peopled by wandering

groups of refugees and demobilized

troops people burned priceless things

for warmth and cooking and the troops

did their best and were proud of their

rescue efforts to secure things but

professional help was desperately needed

of the army and especially Patton was

only with a great deal of effort

persuaded by Eisenhower and rorimer this

is a great picture Eisenhower Bradley

and Patton together they were persuaded

by rorimer

with a lot of difficulty to turn over

the former Nazi headquarters in Munich

as a collecting point well patented

wanted this building for his

headquarters but the art people

prevailed the officer put in charge was

Craig Hughes Smythe who later became

director of NYU Art Institute and I'm

sure

any of you studied there and he was

given two weeks to get it ready for some

of the most precious objects in the

world like the Ghent Altarpiece which I

shall closed here for a change and just

to show you the conditions this is what

the building looked like no heat rubble

filth everywhere kind of remains of old

Nazi propaganda stuff but Craig smites

managed to do it in two weeks so that it

looked like this in a short time the

similar efforts were made it at the

Wiesbaden museum which became a

collecting point where Edith stand and

served and at offenbach which became a

repository for mostly for Jewish books

and objects just to give you a little

idea of the quantities involved

George stouts own list of what was it

I'll say that's only one place only one

of over a thousand storage places added

up to some eleven thousand objects

raining ranging from paintings to suits

of armor plus 2,000 crates of books

archives and so forth so what happened

to all art it was put in trucks when

they could there's a one-room full of

paintings there were many like this that

was taken in trucks when they could get

them back to the collecting points where

it was sorted and identified by teams of

experts from Germany and the allied

countries this one probably wasn't too

hard to identify but a lot of them were

a lot more difficult and an

international team from all over from

France Belgium etc came in to to

identify the things from each of their

countries including that included the

Russians you see here a shipment waiting

to go back to the Soviet Union an OSS

team the OSS was the predecessor of the

CIA but it also had monument

men in it including Lane faizon who was

a famous art professor at Williams and

Ted Rousseau on the left who was here at

the Metropolitan Museum they

interrogated the principal Nazi

operatives and wrote the definitive

reports on the looting and made lists

the lists that are still consultant

today is still the basic information for

most investigations for repatriation

only then where the works repatriated to

the countries from which they had been

taken it was not an American policy to

return things to individuals they went

back to the countries and in those

countries Commission's were set up to to

find out who the things had belonged to

and the repatriations were quite

triumphant this is the lady with the

airman by Leonardo da Vinci

going back to there she is to Poland and

I think the the return to Florence was

quite a triumphant thing all good

propaganda for the United States words

belonging to Germany and Germans have

rather different treatment and their

securing and repatriation would would

caused quite a stir and you'll hear

about that later from Michael Kurtz so

now I think I'll turn this over to

Rachel who will tell you how the things

survived at all

well thank you very much

Thank You Lin for that really fabulous

lecture which really helped us I think

to put names and events together in a

chronology that we can all understand

and now to build on that presentation

we're going to focus on a profile of

sorts if you will of George stout George

stout as you know was a monuments man

but his work continued well beyond that

and he made long-term contributions to

the field of art conservation and

joining us now to talk about this is my

colleague Richard moustache Rachel is a

paper conservator here at the Met where

she specializes in the conservation of

modern contemporary works on paper and

prints so please join me now with the

warm welcome for Rachel know when I

first heard that the monuments men movie

book was being turned into a movie I was

so excited because conservation doesn't

get a lot of play in Hollywood and it

was George Clooney I was thinking of

Angelina for flash-forwards and away the

movie straight a bit from some of the

reality but it did really make me

appreciate and want to go back to look

at this man George stout who was has

been my whole career and for many

conservators if not all conservatives

today so important in really defining

the principles practices and

philosophies of modern conservation I

might start off by saying so what is

conservation and it is the physical

study of the physical side of works of

art it's the care of this type of

cultural property and conservators are

knowledgeable about material sciences

history of our material culture they

understand the aging of the materials

the risk factors such as humidity light

temperature and they work on meth

methods for housing for moving

preserving works as well as preservation

methods in treatment treatment methods

which preserve the work but also stay

true to the

intent or the culture from which they

came so how did George South become this

hero of the monuments man and miss

authority and a lot of this started out

in Harvard in the 1920s when George

Stout was a graduate student in the

history of art and at the same time

Edward Waldo Forbes was the director of

the Fogg Museum at Harvard University

and he became very interested and and

how much paintings deteriorated because

he was seeing it in his own practice

George stout said once the practice at

the time was not really to look too hard

you didn't ask an opera singer about her

digestion you just sort of enjoyed the

show and and and kept looking and and

this was causing problems for what they

were seeing their collection and so

Forbes was very enthusiastic to a

massive collection over a thousand

colorants called the Forbes collection

which could be studied as well as kept

for the future so as a reference source

going forward and this collection exists

at Harvard as well at the Institute of

Fine Arts NYU with subsets and other

museums and universities around the

country the late 19th century also did

see an explosion in art and science the

industrial forces that created polymer

studies dye studies metallurgy brought

along with it the animal tech techniques

such as x-rays to pursue industry but

almost immediately got used for looking

at works of art ultraviolet light for

instance is another type called black

light was also starting to be used

warmer actually wrote and an essay about

the use of UV light in the examination

of many gold works and it was more being

done in Europe Michael Faraday Frances

the 19th century electrochemist in

physics was asked by the National

Gallery to look into how the soot and

the gases from the increasing

polluted environment was degrading the

pictures in the gallery and the Stanwyck

Museum in Berlin in 1888 and the British

Museum in 1921 established scientific

departments in the museum

however in 1925 particularly in the

United States conservation then no more

as restoration was still pinned down to

a lot of craft and a lot of shall I say

fix it not to say that the ability to

treat works of art to read to we to take

that line shall we say in the lower-left

and turn it back into something that can

be appreciated as part of the initial

intent of the experience isn't important

it just wasn't enough first out and he

summed up the field of the time as sort

of a put two single out and people like

buyer beware and catch as catch can

could you know tart up your works of art

make them look good with very little

study with very little ideas about what

they were doing to the work for the

future but also were they being true to

the artists intent and this is really

what he started to think about and

change in the field of conservation in

1928 the fog opened there the first

Center for the analysis of works of art

called the conservation and Technical

Study Center at Harvard and George stout

joined this as a graduate assistant in

1928 he became the head of conservation

in 1933 also at this time

Rutherford gettin's a chemist was the

first chemist to be hired directly by a

US Museum and their first task was in

fact go through the thousands of for

pigments as well as the materials such

as varnishes binding materials oils that

were collected and in this extensive

analysis that combines science analysis

history analysis became this book called

painting materials a short encyclopedia

by gettin's down which today is still

one of the most referred to and best

is in the field and it is a remarkable

groundwork laid at this time toward the

field of examination of materials so we

have science in the service of

examination of art we have people who

were skilled in the hand skills

potentially of treatment what other it's

a stabilization or in painting but what

that really became to champion and

develop was the notion of this

multidisciplinary approach which through

highly trained people who are skilled at

not just these treatment procedures and

preservation concepts but also were

highly trained observers that they knew

how to look they understand what they

were seeing and they took with to this

the history of the materials the aging

of the materials they could combine it

with science they could use allied

information from archives and our

historians to paint a picture excuse the

pun of what the work of art really was

and here we have Daniel Thompson who

actually did a lot of work in looking at

materials in 1924 he was also forbes

assistant and my colleague in 2014

looking very very carefully and intently

and closely at a work of art so I'll

give you some more examples about how

this as he called it three-legged stool

of research from the art historical side

treatment skills as well as science came

together to bring the study of works of

art and the study of the works of

conservation together and it really

became about looking and here I'm to

show you some pictures of today's

intense study of a pair of Dura drawings

and that you might look at them close up

using photomicrographs very close up to

really see how the images were formed

what kind of materials these were an

asking question are these the materials

that would have been used at this time

was it part of the the norm of the

practice of this art historian excuse me

of this artist or was this something

different was this something that the

artist is doing that was particularly

avant-garde were different or maybe

imported from another country all of

which can feed back into looking at the

historical information about works of

art to ask did this artist come from

another country was there another

influence in the creation of art you

could also look at cross-sections of

paintings which is a classic to sort of

see how things were made what were the

layer structures that were intended put

on later potentially problematic and how

to make choices on how to solve them

close-up looking also comes from using

the microscope one of the tools we use

all the time and I'm showing you here a

trio of

close-ups you can see here it's actually

the man and this is his same very

impasto looking suite of white white on

his hat and you can see however that

this top part here is rather darkened so

the question was was it meant to be

darkened maybe it was meant to be silver

that has has tarnished maybe it's a

result of the fact that it's on this

green layer that causes this

deterioration of this white these all

questions that go Toor what this was

supposed to look like close looking came

about just looking at details asking

questions about what you see was this is

this an event that was created by the

artist was this something that happened

to it later and here's another showing

you of how the three parts or the multi

parts of conservation come together you

can see here in this close-up but it is

in fact if we close up I know one can

read the magnification on the bottom but

what you see here in this pair of lips

is what is called an under drawing

meaning before the painting was made the

artists put down on the support a sketch

and you can see here the blue what

appears to be blueish lips that are

coming through now the question is was

this intended well you're supposed to

see the under drawing maybe that was

part of the the aesthetic of this

to the artist further work and this is

from the National Portrait Gallery in

London

using some exact tools that were started

from warmers day x-rays and infrareds

we're looking at this particular

painting to show that yes it does have

us full under drawing well still not

enough the science holds it up your

observant eye sees the under drawing but

you then have to relate it back to the

the cultural time and what these what

the intent was what these are supposed

to look like and these portraits were

meant to be rather finished portraits

you don't see the under painting you

don't see the under drawing so how do

you explain this why is that there now

was this something new that came in

where is this something that has aged

over time and knowing about the material

in this case but oil that bound the

paint you know that over time it becomes

more transparent and so what would have

been hidden now becomes visible you can

see the blue under painting of these

lips and of course then I put this

Picasso in here to say you have to

always assess by artist by time you can

see tons of the underdrawing all those

little scratchy scratches on this very

very small fantastic self-portrait by

him and he completely intended you to

see it at all times

the study also materials also came down

to as I mentioned how they aged I gave

the example of the linseed oil for

instance becoming more transparent over

time there was lots of light studies

done and the interesting thing about

this some crucible 30s when Stout was in

fact head of the conservation department

was he was not working in a vacuum this

sort of idea of looking materials

studying materials and being interested

in the permanence being interested in

their conservation was spreading out to

other places and art companies for

instance this is Windsor and Newton they

were doing Studies on

studies and pigment studies to see how

they fade and even today when we buy

pigments from se Windsor Newton you can

look up their life's fastness ratings

artists we're also going back saying I

don't want my pictures to fade I don't

want them to be subject to what I see

I'm gonna try to choose pictures and

choose methods choose materials and

choose methods that will survive so what

I'm showing you I'm sorry what I'm

showing you here is this is a small card

of this beautiful crimson Lake that I

found in this notebook and the Windsor

Newton archives you can see his data

from 1936 as a conservator I was sort of

stunned because you never see crimson

like this color this is what you usually

see hope you look at crimson Lake

because it is a highly susceptible faded

pigment and so here's a fade test here's

the part that was protected and here's

the part that was allowed to be exposed

and this was tucked into a notebook in

the back of a archive for 70 years I can

see what the color the original intent

would have been had an artist chosen

this he was not going for a pale pink

washi was going for this vivid vivid

color we're really going back and

speaking to the artists intent and

here's an example of this actually you

can see this what I'm showing you here

in this Picasso drawing is this here is

a detail of right here and what this is

is this protected band shows that it was

blue ink that zipped here and what

you're looking at here and all this

cross hatching here all would have been

this bright blue and so when making

interpretations about this work of art

making interpretations about how Picasso

was using color you don't want to talk

about it as tan paper with black and

brown ink the reality is it was very

very white paper with black and blue ink

and it makes a difference is looking how

you interpret these works of art on that

notice there's always be keep in mind

that artists particularly in the 20th

century sometimes chose papers

intentionally pre deteriorated excuse me

these were in fact deteriorated these

have the same darkening that we just saw

in this Picasso but Schwitters chosen

that way

so this was part of his aesthetic in

this plan of love to have these

deteriorated appearance you also studied

how artists worked through photographs

this is a terrific photograph of Jackson

Pollock working on a drip painting in

his studio you might actually be able to

do analysis technical chemical analysis

on the remnants of paint sets many

museums are self included collect

historic materials both of known and

unknown Providence but potentially

dateable to sort of see what these

paintings and what paints existed Forbes

for instance collected sergeant's

palette back in the late 1920s because

he too understood that being able to

analyze the originals was very very

useful toward looking at all the other

works of art seeing how art was made at

different times is also very important

this is a book that shows how tempera

paintings were made by medieval methods

people were going back to see through

these translations what are what were

the practices at the time the

interesting thing in the 1930s because

of the the new desire toward better

quality materials toward making your own

pains toward preservation artists

themselves were going back and looking

at this and so you sort of have an

interesting position now that you're

both looking at this for what them that

evilest use but also for instance what

are third of might have used or a

Georgia O'Keeffe might have used and

many many books are being published and

translated to English in the 1930s the

materials the artists by Max Turner was

one of the very well-known ones that

many many artists had and they used it

like a like a like a textbook to improve

the materials they were making but it

gives lots of recipes and lots of ideas

about what materials not just how they

behave what they meant what an artist

meant intention through material when

choosing certain ones another one's by

Hiller the research and materials also

goes to looking at what artists scribble

down this bone are wrote down the

pigments that he was choosing to use

this time period in the 1940s and here

we have one by our third of showing how

he's mixing up a very particular type of

binding material and as I said there's

companies we're also doing testing and

here for instance they wanted to see how

this pink color would do over this white

and of course it did not go well and

this was the cracking that ensued but

there was testing after testing all of

which conservators use both use before

they make any decisions toward how to

approach a work of art because how the

materials behave is very important to

how they're going to preserve and this

is actually I put this Duchamp in here

because even Forbes himself who was very

interested in old master paintings said

but what I'm gonna do about these like

duchamp's and people who are using these

materials that are not sort of the

traditional old master materials and

this is that he was using one of these

new plastics called an acetate which

naturally just buckles like this over

time I'm going to show you another

example of the use of multifaceted

aspects of conservation research to get

to a story about Picasso and this is one

we have on our collection and it is a

very heavy painting it's on cardboard

and it has a bit of a hmm a bit of a

halo shall we say and a large research

project into the way that he was working

was under being undertaken and so we did

things like infrared in other words a

material technique that often in old

masters can look underneath can see the

underdrawing

to see if there would tell you anything

about his materials how they painted but

it's not enough of course just to look

at this infrared you have to know how

the materials respond to infrared so ii

would say an x-ray but it was looking

back at the research and the books it

also made me find this picture where

this is a very different

head involved in the same picture and

what I was able to find through the

archive research of this was that

unfortunately someone had cleaned it at

some point and this material despite the

fact that it's an oil paint should be

water soluble is so powdery the wipes

right off and unfortunately that is what

happened to this somewhere in its

history that someone wiped off basically

the curls of this of this boy and it

comes to us without this hair that it

used to have

and it makes a large different excuse me

it makes a very large difference when

you're trying to assess where this fits

into Picasso's work what kind of

influence is weaselly looking at what

other art making fits actually this

model on the right with the full hair

rather than the rather no hair or bald

model on the left this is just to show

you that in treatment decisions are all

determined by this as well you have a

drawing here by Matisse it is wrinkled

you might say well I'd like to flatten

it but you certainly don't want to

flatten it once you realize that one of

the things that's here is the sketch of

the next drawing because this isn't a

pad of paper and so you can see the

order by which he was pressing and that

although we haven't found the drawing

yet somewhere there's a pad that has

that drawing and you knew that these

were an intimate contact what might be

considered damaged for instance these

are stains from wood knots also speaks

to a history and a usage of these of

works of art these are two small

paintings on paper that were American

and it was part of the addition to frame

them with shingles and sure enough that

is showing the artifact of this practice

this is the letter that was referred to

before about that of protecting the

monuments and the idea that there were

the bombing map that that thing had just

showed and that there was an idea

it should be convenience that makes you

choose not to - in fact her cultural

property but I think once and I think

she showed this beautifully once they

actually got their boots on the ground

they they were not trying to decide

ahead of time with monuments they were

walking into rubble storehouses which

just happens to be also a incredible

building in and of itself and what

George stout did was wrote a field guide

and this field guide written in 1943

also combined with constable another

Harvard person under the auspices of the

Harvard Group Committee on the

protection of monuments was called notes

on safeguarding the Serbian cultural

materials in the field and was reading

this guide that I really was struck by

the thought and the logic and the the 20

years of being conservator and looking

at materials went into this field guide

and it is still as relevant today as a

field guide as anything ever was and it

really laid out some major principles

which I thought was very interesting but

he puts forth and he says this guide was

inspired by the American Red Cross first

aid book which says first aid is the

immediate temporary care given in the

case of accident or sudden illness

before the services of his physician can

be secured it is not a manual on the

care or conservation of monuments such a

manual would run many hundreds of pages

be dangerous to all but experts and

would be almost useless to the untrained

and he was really attempting here to

give first aid to buildings monuments

libraries museums scientific collections

which have been damaged or put in

jeopardy

by the operations of war and the large

strokes that he laid down here in terms

of how to organize we're both to look at

the materials try to assess what they

were and see what the risk was so the

one can move on and either transport

them or have conservation done by

experts and so this is an example of one

of the things that we still think about

today putting them whether organic or

inorganic where they made by ceramics

and glass and stone

or they made by ivories and feathers and

wood are they composite objects and that

the specialist who works on your

sculpture is not the same person who

works on your painting or your drawing

and this field right now this terms of

specialization there is in fact

paintings and objects there's furniture

specialists in the 20th century it has

gone on to include photography

conservation time-based media and

electronic art these all have become

some specialties of conservation and

these are some of the risks that he

outlined and because a lot of the

conservation is particularly there if

you're in the field like this is

assessing risk of what you can do water

is a big risk so much the important

information that was learned was about

archives if this is the state of your

archives there is going to be a problem

in record-keeping and what else you can

figure out he was looking at he often

wrote in his manual don't put things in

sunlight if you can help it because he

knew from his material study that you're

going to have things like fading he

wrote about such and pollution and even

the gases of war and how that can affect

the surfaces and here you can see

something that has a surface that threw

through air pollution has yellow

significantly burnt burnt arts not

always as part of what comes up today

but I could see in a war zone art that's

been burnt insect damage mold growth and

he even puts in here just carelessness

acknowledging the better something that

happens unfortunately a lot you also put

in of course bullet-ridden facades

things that have been looted and things

that have been vandalized this picture

of these very organized racks is one way

that one could come across works of art

when they were in the field but it seems

as though more often they were walking

up unto monuments and had just massive

amounts of destruction and rubble and

the question he really put out was field

goddess what what do you do and to make

decisions on what do you do you come

across something

as burnt and looks like this is it what

is the risk is it better just to leave

it is it better to try to pack it and

hear outlines this incredibly well this

is an interesting question it's a group

of artifacts submerged in a tub of water

your first instinct may be take them out

of the water but these have been soaking

they have a certain salinity and may be

taking them out and drawing them quickly

it's gonna cause them all to crack and

buckle and deteriorate maybe the best

plan is actually just leave this and he

emphasizes over and over again that a

lot of time it's the domes that are more

important than the dews some storerooms

may look a little rough and tumble but

maybe they were actually perfectly

stable and then one of the things I took

away from this field guide was in

conjunction with looking at the

monuments ban was the amount of artwork

that was being moved moved by the

countries to put them in salt mines to

protect them move by the the German

armies in the looting moved back by the

Allied armies and really writing about

how to move objects became an incredibly

important part of his contribution to

how artwork wasn't severely damaged over

and over and over again with these

hundreds of not hundreds of thousands of

art artifacts and furniture traipsing

the continents and one of the things I

think is interesting about the picture

on the left is that it's a chair and you

say well I pick up chairs all the time I

wouldn't care to sit on chairs but this

chair may have to be so deteriorated

that it actually can't function as a

chair anymore and that's one of the

things about assessing the risk and

looking at individual objects I show

this picture of their Stout in the

middle moving this moving the marble

vadhana he may be using the very and

laced pillows and and bed mattress

ticking but the principles that were

involved and how to have this move at

least vibrations and something that

weighed a ton be able to move is not

dissimilar to what these conservators

are doing now moving this Louise

Nevelson schedule a sculpture this is

part of the Ghent Altarpiece and you can

see here for instance it has these

barred white pieces of paper on it

just called facing and this is something

dunked beforehand because moving is in a

car lot some vibrations he knew that and

so the facing was put on so if he saw

something that looked like this and all

cracked he wouldn't lose every bit of

material long on the altarpiece handling

was very important people were gonna be

handling these over and over again and

one of the things he said was the

greatest risks and emergency comes from

an expert handling and the six primary

actions of conservatives today which

include examination documentation

treatment preventative measures research

and education came out of this crucible

of his time period as the head of

conservation at the Fogg he put together

this idea that you were always going to

be doing research and tense looking and

combine it with scientific analysis as

appropriate and this was the way to be

able to make good choices for the works

of art for their preservation for their

study and to pass on about how these

were going to survive for the future

in 1975 you retired in 1970 but in 1975

he he did these watercolors here and at

this by this point 1975 not only was he

at Harvard until world war two then he

came back then he went to Japan for a

short time the same idea of doing this -

men came back and became director that

means the museum Isabella Stewart

Gardner Museum and Western Museum of Art

his colleagues including Sheldon kept

which he showed before here went on to

establish two out of the four graduate

programs in conservation in the United

States and so by 1975 right before he

died in 1978 the old wall of catches

catch can and will pick fixture pictures

became this billboard of the Institute's

that went towards studying and the

education programs and the publications

and it was really a change in his fifty

years that has turned the profession

into a highly academic one that requires

gradual training there's often three or

four years of training as well as

Fellowship's and really combines science

booking treatment skills and there is

numerous research projects that are

ongoing today and I just put up a few

that are available on the web from MoMA

National Portrait Gallery from the Met

and the tape which really delve into all

aspects of their study of art and just

as a parting comment in his field guide

one of the things he wrote was would you

realize where he had this passion for

art and it's passion to study was that

he he understood that wiping out

cultural artifacts was akin to wiping

out a culture or people that it's a

visual residue and a vital residue of

the past and it was transformed into the

fabric of the people and they wish to

preserve it for the future up left I

show Warsaw the Biman the Buddha's that

were destroyed down left what would it

be like at the gym if the gioconda the

Mona Lisa never came back to the nor did

any of the paintings there and there's

still a sting laughter you think about

the World Trade Center these are more

monuments to which became iconic to

people and are to be preserved for now

in the future and in all such countries

he wrote the monuments are cherished

sites for people the churches the

shrines of libraries are painting their

statues safeguarding the monuments will

not feed the hungry people but it will

show respect for beliefs culture and the

customs of all men it bears witness to a

culture heritage of any particular group

or society and is also the cult of

heritage of all mankind and I think that

was one of his best departing legacies

thank you

Thank You Rachael for really allowing us

to really engage with George stouts work

our final speaker for the afternoon is

Michael J Kurtz visiting professor at

the University of Maryland's College of

Information studies prior to this

Michael worked for 37 years as

professional archivist manager and

senior executive at the National

Archives and Records Administration he

has published extensively and highlights

include America and the return of Nazi

contraband from the Allied struggle over

cultural restitution 1942 to 1947 and

the weeks leading up to today's

presentation I've had the pleasure of a

number of great and lively phone

conversations with Michael to talk a

little bit about this afternoon and to

really think about what we could do at

this presentation and I'm really

delighted to be able to welcome to the

stage and a few moments to tell the

story of the monuments men really

requires an extensive study of archival

materials in order to reconstruct

movements and activities and Michael is

going to be joining us now to share his

perspective as an archivist and to help

us to think about how the interpretation

of primary sources really is

instrumental in putting together a story

as important as this one so please join

me with a welcome for Michael Jake

good afternoon is an honor to be here as

Jennifer said she and I had a number of

very interesting conversations and she

wanted me to to identify one or two

documents that was from an archival

perspective that would really help tell

the story of the monuments man of the

work of restitution and I said to her

Jennifer I went through two or three

million pages of material thousands of

boxes and and let nicholas knows exactly

what i mean but she challenged me and it

was a good challenge and i thought

alright if i had to pick two documents

and so i decided to focus on a decree

from adolf hitler and a document called

the Wiesbaden manifesto because i think

what's important about them is they draw

these documents tell us what were the

values the motivations the purpose of

both plunderers and restores so this is

what we're going to do today is to

explore documentation not only from the

archival and historical point of view

but from the very active work of the

monuments men now we've seen this before

this is James rorimer and Lynne has

talked about him and the important thing

and the reason I'm using this picture he

said he's showing he has his found the

jewels of the Rothschild collection at

the castle of Luke with the second in

bavaria and he got this information

about where the french works of art were

located and stored by the Germans from

Rozsival and even more importantly or at

I should say at least as important is

she gave him the lead the fact that

their records of the Rosenberg looting

organization for at the castle and the

Germans kept meticulous records of what

they took where they took them from

where they sent them and the Rosenberg

looting organization the eerr as that

the acronym was on both the Western and

the eastern front so it's a treasure

trove of documentation and it was one of

the basis on which to the monuments men

were able to make restitutions after the

war where where were these materials

where do they come from

where do they need to go what was the

country of origin and so not only was

were more critical to getting to the

castle finding the 20,000 or so works of

art and objects that were at issue on

Steam but also the ER our records and I

would argue that that was an extremely

critical find on which restitution was

based the prosecution of Goering and

Rosenberg at the Nuremberg trials and

all of our subsequent subsequent

dealings with looted art missing art

proper ownership all of that really goes

back to the records of eerr and and so

wormers contribution was absolutely

critical and now we're going to talk

about the Hitler decree there are

actually three of them related to France

between July and the end of September in

1940 but they're all basically saying

the same thing and so clearly they were

aimed and as the document says that Jews

Freemasons and other opponents of the

Nazi regime I think it's very

interesting that it was addressed this

decree is addressed to all Offices of

the Vermont which is the German military

the party and the state I think what

this tells us from a document document

area documentation point of view is that

hundreds and thousands of individuals

were actually involved in one way or

another with the great theft across the

continent and if we go deeper it's part

of the whole strategy and execution of

Holika

just because the destruction of cultural

identity as Rachel mentioned it was a

core purpose of the Nazi regime and so

let me quote authors of the he calls

Hitler calls the Jews the Freemasons and

others authors of the present war

against the Reich in other words the

Germans are the victims so this is

beginning to give us a perspective the

systemic spiritual battle against these

forces is a task made necessary by the

war effort so we get a glimpse into the

racist ideology that motivated the Nazi

regime and the purpose that Hitler gives

for why libraries and archives should be

confiscated is for future scientific

research and earlier we saw a Himmler at

a dig site pseudo scientific research

was a major aspect of Nazi ideology

Hitler goes further and the decree to

say it applies to cultural treasures

which are the property of Jews which are

ownerless or the origin of which cannot

be clearly established protective

custody in other words was the legal

fiction used for much of what was

plundered this is July 5th 1940 what's

fast forward to November 7th of 1945 the

world's very different by this point

Germany is defeated the Allies are in

the various zones of occupation and

there are many questions facing the

Allied commanders in the various zones

one of which is what to do with all of

the works of art and other priceless

object five or six million items

estimated what to do with it a great

deal of it was in the u.s. zone of

occupation by chance

because that's where the Germans had hid

much of the material and questions about

reparations and restitution were at the

forefront at the Berlin conference in

July of 1945 the United States did not

intend to take industrial reparations or

financial compensation from the Germans

however there was some interest in high

levels of the government a possibly

using German art as reparations

intangible reparations and so this is

the background of what's going on and an

order comes from the army that 202

German works of art from the Kaiser

Friedrich Museum stored at this point at

the Wiesbaden central collecting point

and we saw a photo of that earlier are

to be sent to the United States for

safekeeping and protective custody

so this greatly alarmed the monuments

men and women there were 35 at this

point attached to monuments Fine Arts

and Archives headquarters in the u.s.

zone of occupation

Walter farmer who was the director of

the Wiesbaden central collecting point

and that was the main collecting point

for German owned art and for internal

German loot called a meeting and there

one of the monuments men after the

discussions Parker Leslie wrote

Wiesbaden manifesto it's unique I think

in the annals of the US Army it's a

protest against army policy signed by 32

of the 35 monuments men and women

because it was signed by edith standin

it caused an enormous furor within the

army

Mason Hammond whose photo we saw earlier

had a heated argument with general

Lucius clay who was the military

governor in the u.s. zone of occupation

and clay reminded him that he

in uniform he needed to follow orders

and he keep his opinions to himself till

he was out of the army so let's talk a

little bit and contrast this these

values and principles that the monuments

men and women stood for against those of

the Hitler decree and they argue that

there is no necessity as already has

been discussed the central collecting

point system was in place these were

secure and safe facilities there was no

need to ship any works of art across the

North Atlantic in the winter that this

was not necessary more importantly they

argue in this in this document that by

doing this the United States is

establishing a precedent which is

neither morally tenable nor trustworthy

and they felt that they were in the same

position as the people the man being

personally being prosecuted at the

Nuremberg trials at that very time and

they will be prosecuted for the crime of

sequestering under the pretext of

protective custody the cultural

treasures of German occupied countries

furthermore they said we are thus put

before any candid eye as Noah's culpable

than those whose prosecution we affect

to sanction so this is a very very

powerful statement a statement of their

values of their principles of what

motivated them to get into the war

effort to go through all the hardships

and difficulties and challenges that

have been described as afternoon and

they call this project amongst

themselves westward ho Watteau they were

very derisive of this very derisive so

we have Hammonds argument with Lucius

clay who was really not someone that I

think subordinates argued with and then

Henry McBride came out

the National Gallery and a number of

these individuals these monuments men

were very suspicious that this was an

effort to add to the collections of the

National Gallery I've never seen any

documentation that says that but this

was their concern and I interviewed

Sumner McKnight Crosby before he died he

was the special art advisor to the

Department of State and to the Roberts

Commission at the time and he was clear

that clay was interested in art German

art as possible reparations for the

United States and so when Colonel

McBride came out as he had it he was a

higher ranked officer than these

captains and lieutenants and privates

and so he went first to the Munich

collecting point where as we know Craig

Hugh Smythe was the director and he

wanted to take the xerton Vermeer as

part of these works of art and smile

just wouldn't do it they just would not

do it and he just said no it's safe its

secure it's not going anywhere

well McBride kind of changed this

strategy and decided well we'll just

take 202 works of art from the Kaiser

Friedrich and one of his battles was

with Charles Parkhurst

whose photo we saw earlier and a lot of

pressure was applied and parker's was

told that he really did not want to get

involved in this did not want to protest

this because he had a family and there

was a lot at stake and so that reps

ruptured the relationship between those

two men for life and it didn't hinder or

stop Parkhurst from signing the document

at all so if we were going to just pick

one document out of all the millions

that exist

and that they see these men rode in the

reports and the Diaries and all the rest

of it I would argue that the Wiesbaden

manifesto is is one of the ones that

really stands out and brings a human

face to their efforts earlier we saw a

picture of edith standin and roseville

on here they are again but there with

different items that are going to be

restituted and an e de standin was the

only woman the monuments amongst the

monuments men who signed the Wiesbaden

manifesto and i think that was an act of

professional and personal courage and

here you see several items that are

going to be restituted roseville on i

already mentioned i think really is is

quite an a heroic figure and she was

involved in creating she created this

documentation that enabled the records

that I've mentioned the French works of

art to be located really quite promptly

at the conclusion of the war it took

rorimer was a very difficult to gain her

trust she did not trust him she did not

trust bureaucrats she didn't trust

really anybody actually pencil but

finally she did reveal to him where all

of these items were their records and so

forth and he went straight straight

there maybe that's one of the advantages

of not being tied to a particular unit

they also had some flexibility to move

around and so Milan was actually accused

initially at the end of the war of being

a collaborator because she had worked

for four years at the shoe to palm with

the Germans and it became quite clear

that she was not she was involved for

many years after the war working with

the French Commission for restitution

locating works of art getting them

returned eventually became a curator

curator at the jeu de Paume received

many medals and awards from her

government and so I wanted to kind of

bring us our attention to the monuments

women as well as to the monuments men

and to these documents that tell a story

documents do tell a story and they

require patience and research

fortunately these days a good bit of

documentation is now available digitally

online and I and advantage that Lynne

Nicolas and I did not have when were

doing our research but the issue of

looted art the restitution to families

and heirs and survivors of these losses

continues to be a very pressing one and

one of the initiatives that I was able

to take when I was at the National

Archives was to create an international

web portal for research and Nazi erat

cultural assets so you can go online and

you will find documentation from 18

nations and organizations that have

records related to cultural restitution

and to looting and much of the Roberts

Commission records and the records of

the monuments man that were created are

now digital and online and it really

makes I think possible for the first

time individuals with limited resources

to do research because you really can't

go from place to place in the United

States the National Archives places

overseas so this international web

portal which is managed and operated by

the US National Archives is a an

extremely important tool in the cause of

restitution

it's the outgrowth of a series of

discussions and international

conferences in Washington in 99

eight in Vilnius in 2000 in Prague in

2009 and finally it came to Kingdom

fruition and has its international

support from a number of countries

France Germany Belgium the Netherlands

the United Kingdom the Ukraine various

of hungry various countries and

organisations so documentation and

archives is absolutely clear not only in

telling the historical in providing the

historical record for our interpretation

and understanding of the past but it's

also an essential tool for going forward

and rectifying problems addressing

issues and and trying to make to the

greatest extent possible the correction

of great wrongs though clearly nothing

can ever be restored to the way it was

archives are an incredibly valuable tool

and trying to make the greatest

Corrections possible so with that I'd

like to close and thank you for your

attention

I'd like to thank all of our speakers

and most importantly I'd like to thank

you the audience for coming out this

afternoon and spending your Sunday here

that Sunday at the Met and I invite you

to come back next week we're going to

have a presentation that's going to be

focusing on our early American guitars

exhibition so join us then