ABSTRACT
In 2009, not long after I had taken on the leadership of the Smithsonian’s World War II-era provenance project, I attended a series of town hall meetings hosted by the US Department of State to consider an alternate dispute route for legal proceedings involving World War II-era claims. 1 I will never forget the first meeting, as it was there I first witnessed outright hostility toward museums from claimant attorneys and representatives, who criticized museums essentially for following U.S. legal procedures and standard museum practices. A few years later, I attended an international symposium at which an historian declared that, ‘Until all museum directors and curators are in handcuffs’, museums would not be returning looted art in their collections. After a lecture on the ‘Monuments Men’ in Washington, D.C., a colleague overheard a visitor remark: ‘You know, most things in museums were looted or stolen.’ How is it that art museums – public, educational institutions that preserve cultural treasures – are now cast in a light that makes them appear shady, or even unlawfully detaining collection items in their care?
