IFAR Journal
Volume 9, No. 1
2006
The Benton Fake Game
— Henry Adams
The author discusses how, over the course of many years, he has distinguished authentic works by Thomas Hart Benton from fake ones and how such fakes are markete
The Recovery from Austria of Five Paintings by Gustav Klimt: An IFAR Evening with the Neue Galerie, July 31, 2006
— E. Randol Schoenberg
Schoenberg, the attorney for Maria Altmann, heir to the Bloch-Bauer Collection, discusses his successful eight-year battle with the Austrian government to recover five paintings by Gustav Klimt that had belonged to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer before WWII.
News and Updates: MFA Boston Cedes 13 Antiquities to Italy
— Sharon Flescher
On September 28, 2006, after months of negotiations, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts signs an agreement to transfer 13 antiquities from its collection to Italy. Flescher discusses the terms of the agreement and compares it with the one recently signed by the Metropolitan Museum.
News and Updates: Conservators Studying Damage to Recovered Munch Paintings
— Sharon Flescher
From September 27 to October 1, 2006, the Munch Museum exhibited the two recovered paintings–The Scream and Madonna. The article details the physical damage to the two works, including moisture damage, tears, and scratches.
News and Updates: Hungarian Gold Train Case Settlement
— Lucille A. Roussin
Discusses the settlement of Rosner et al. v. United States of America. The class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of Hungarian Holocaust survivors against the U. S. government, sought an accounting of the contents of the Gold Train, seized by U.S. Army forces in 1945.
News and Updates: Austria’s Belvedere Loses Another Painting to Claimant
— Sharon Flescher
The government of Austria awards Munch’s Summer Night on the Beach, which has hung in Austria’s Gallery Belvedere since 1937, to the granddaughter of Gustav and Alma Mahler after a 60-year restitution battle.
News and Updates: Russia’s Hermitage Suffers Major Insider Theft
— Sharon Flescher
The husband of a deceased curator is detained in the theft of 221 decorative items from the reserve collection of the Hermitage Museum over a period of years.
News and Updates: British Museum Exhibits 5 Drawings Once Looted from Feldmann Collection:
— Sharon Flescher
The Museum exhibits five Old Master drawings, formerly in the Feldmann Collection, including The Liberation of St. Peter, once attributed to Rembrandt and restituted to the Feldmann heirs with IFAR’s help. A claim by the Feldmann heirs against the Courtauld for the return of three drawings remains outstanding.
Letter to the Editor. Re: IFAR article by Charles B. Goldstein, “Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge: La Goulue: Lithograph or Reproduction?”
— Mary Weaver Chapin
Chapin, the co-curator of “Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre,” criticizes Charles Goldstein’s understanding of the production of Toulouse-Lautrec’s iconic first poster—Moulin Rouge.
Stolen Art Alert
Thefts include: Edvard Munch, Toward the Forest 2; Lynn Chadwick, The Watchers; six icons from 221 items stolen from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia); Our Lady of Vladimir; Our Lady of Kazan; Our Lady of Czestochowa; Savior, the Almighty; St. Panteleimon; Holy Trinity. Antiquities: Winged Horse-Shape Sea Monster Brooch (stolen from the Usak Museum, Turkey, and replaced with a fake in 2005).
Recovered Art
Recoveries include: Edvard Munch’s The Scream and Madonna, stolen from the Munch Museum, Oslo, on August 24, 2004, and nine engravings by Rembrandt, stolen from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna on October 11, 1989: The Adoration of the Shepherds; Circumcision in the Stable; The Descent from the Cross by Torchlight; Landscape with Cottages Beside a Road; Bald Old Man in Right Profile; The Return of the Prodigal Son; Self-Portrait Wearing a Beret with Feather; Saint Jerome Kneeling in Prayer; and The Triumph of Mordecai.
