Alfred Flechtheim Scandal at Museum of Modern Art - MoMA - Continues

I reported previously that the MoMA published a catalog called German Expressionism:The Graphic Impulse by Starr Figura that COMPLETELY eliminated mention of Alfred Flechtheim.

Image of Rudolph Belling's sculpture Portrait of Alfred Flechtheim (1927)

More on Alfred Flechtheim and MoMA's attempts to write him out of art history hereand here

MoMA has perpetrated the fiction that Alfred Flechtheim's gallery was not Aryanized in 1933 because MoMA wishes to shield its collection, particularly the items that were stolen from Alfred Flechtheim, from public scrutiny.   More information on the Nazi taking of Flechtheim's inventory here.

MoMA's website does not even show an image of Belling's Portrait of Alfred Flechtheim, and the MoMA has never told the story of Flechtheim's role as a Nazi persecutee story here.
But after the scandal of publishing the German Expressionism catalog that pretends Flechtheim does not exist, MoMA's website now shows 28 works that it claims were published by Alfred Flechtheim:

That's just completely ridiculous, MoMA's collection has many more works from Flechtheim's 1933 inventory.   As I argued here the provenance of Paul Klee's Pastorale shows that it was likely taken by the Nazi Alexander Voemel from Flechtheim in 1933.

Pastorale (Rhythms) (1927)
Paul Klee (German, born Switzerland. 1879-1940)

1927. Tempera on canvas mounted on wood, 27 1/4 x 20 5/8" (69.3 x 52.4 cm). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and exchange

Collection work meeting criteria specified in Introduction.

157.1945

Rudolf Probst (Galerie Neue Kunst Fides; Das Kunsthaus), Dresden/Mannheim. Until 1928

Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Berlin and Düsseldorf, then in London. 1928 – at least 1930 [likely until Flechthem’s death, in March 1937]

(J. B. Neumann (Jsrael Ber Neumann), New York. 1930. Agent for Flechtheim)

(Alex Vömel, Dusseldorf. Former Flechtheim Gallery, became Alex Vömel Gallery from March 1933. [Likely on consignement from Flechtheim, 1933 – 1934])

James Mayor Gallery, London. [Brought to London by Flechtheim when he started to work for the Mayor Gallery, c. 1934.] 1934 – 1935

For sale during Paul Klee exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel, 1935

(Paul Klee, Bern. Returned to him from above exhibition, unsold, 1935)

[Likely returned by Klee to Flechtheim in London]

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Paris. [Likely acquired/on consignment from Flechtheim] by 1937 - by 1939

Mrs. Stanley B. Resor, New York. By 1941

Nierendorf Gallery (Karl Nierendorf), New York (New York gallery opened in 1937). Acquired from Stanley B. Resor, by 1945

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired from Nierendorf through Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund and exchange, 1945

And astonishingly, after publishing a catalogue for a 2011 German Expressionism exhibition that pretends Flechtheim did not exist, MoMA's website now has the following:
Alfred Flechtheim

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Starr Figura, German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2011

Alfred Flechtheim opened his gallery in 1913, with sponsorship from Paul Cassirer. Became known as the leading dealer in Germany for modern French art, much of it obtained through his friend Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the eminent Parisian gallerist and German émigré. Despite his ambivalence toward contemporary German art, eventually also exhibited a select number of Expressionist, Bauhaus, and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists, including Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, George Grosz (under contract from 1925 to 1931), Paul Klee (whom he represented from 1927 to 1933), Oskar Kokoschka, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, and August Macke. Published prints by Grosz, Else Lasker-Schüler, Ludwig Meidner, and many other now less familiar German artists. In 1921 began to issue the cosmopolitan art and culture periodical Der Querschnitt; three years later, sold it to the publishing house Propyläen. Highly successful, particularly in the postwar years, moved his primary operation to Berlin in 1921, and opened branches in Frankfurt and Cologne in 1922. A victim of Nazi anti-Semitism, was forced to emigrate in 1933, and died, impoverished, in London in 1937.

Selected Bibliography

Jentsch, Ralph. Alfred Flechtheim und George Grosz. Bonn: Weidle, 2008.

Peters, Hans Albert, and Stephan von Wiese, eds. Alfred Flechtheim, Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger. Exh. cat. Düsseldorf: Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, 1987.

Iris Schmeisser

So it looks like MoMA's website is trying to make it look as if Starr Figura, the one who wrote the catalog that eliminated any mention of Flechtheim, actually did include mention of Flechtheim, but MoMA hired Iris Schmeisser to write the Website's description of Flechtheim.

Alfred Flechtheim's influence on MoMA in its first year of existence was tremendous and remains undocumented by MoMA's pseudo-art historians.  Why doesn't MoMA acknowledge its intellectual and artistic debt to Flechtheim?   And what happens to someone who writes a catalog on German Expressionism who calls Flechtheim AMBIVALENT towards German contemporary art when indeed he was perhaps one of its greatest champions?

Just look at Rudolph Belling's portrait of Alfred Flechtheim, one of which he gave to Harvard to launch what became the Busch-Reisinger collection.   Does that reflect AMBIVALENCE toward German contemporary art?   Why is Belling's sculpture featuring Flechtheim's nose not front and center in the German Expressionism exhibit?

Where the hell is Flechtheim's nose?

Flechtheim's assistant, Curt Valentin, became a Nazi agent and sold massive quantities of Nazi-looted art onto the U.S. market.   Story here

The Belling sculpture of Flechtheim was a "gift" of Curt Valentin to MoMA:

Why won't MoMA photograph and exhibit this artwork?

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US Supreme Court Cert Petition: U.S. Museums Betray The Holocaust Victims Redress Act of 1998

We recently filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the heirs of George Grosz in Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art, accessible by the link below.    The certiorari petition describes how in federal courts around the country, museums and holders of artworks taken from Nazi persecutees have successfully advanced doctrines of constructive notice that have eviscerated the right under state law to recover stolen property that Congress thought existed when it enacted the Holocaust Victims Redress Act of 1998.   As the cert petition shows, museums told Congress that state law remedies were sufficient for victims and their heirs to recover stolen artworks.    After 1998, with Congress off their backs, museums then argued to the courts that no remedies were available under state law to those who actually tried to reclaim artworks.   Several museums even retaliated against Jewish heirs by suing them.   By filing these pre-emptive strikes, museums successfully avoided scrutiny into the question of whether or not the art was stolen.  By leaving potentially looted artworks in our museums, such "quiet title" actions have stained our national conscience.

Unfortunately, very few voices have been heard to draw attention to this tremendous crime.   Media coverage is anecdotal.  Each time stolen artworks are uncovered in museum collections, the museums feign horror and surprise, but the reality is that in the high-tax Cold War years, laundering stolen art was a major function of the U.S. museum community.  We are all now paying for those Cold-war "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" policies.   A generation of wealthy Americans dodged taxes by flipping stolen property to museums, thus passing the societal cost of their misdeeds onto the backs of U.S. taxpayers.

In turning their backs on restitution of Nazi-looted artworks after 1998, American museums have betrayed our trust and have become international scofflaws.   This is a major problem and inconsistent with the traditions of common law under which no one can take good title from a thief.   It is also inconsistent with the traditions of equity, which do not unjustly enrich those with superior knowledge, such as the museums, that should have known better than to profit from the world's worst crime.  Everyone in the art community, thanks to U.S. government warnings starting in the 1940's, knew that acquiring an artwork of European provenance that entered the country after 1932 but was created before 1946 was a "red flag".   Art historians now pretend to have no knowledge of this and instead play a game of blaming the victims and waiting until enough people die or are discouraged so that they can assert the defense of laches.   While museums throw up endless new buildings, they claim they can't even afford to figure out what stolen art is in their collections.   And by refusing to share documents and publish provenances, they ensure that no one else can figure out the stolen property trail either.

American museums, having unclean hands, should not be heard to invoke equity.  American museums, which should be taking the lead in opposing Holocaust profiteering, have instead set up impenetrable legal defenses and hide the truth behind spurious claims of privilege.   This is both morally and legally untenable.  If U.S. museums don't do the right thing and show world leadership in returning the property of Holocaust victims, no one will.

Grosz v Moma Petition of Certiorari FINAL With Appendix 5.10.11


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Art Litigation: US Museums Breaching Ethics Codes By Refusing To Research and Return Nazi Looted Art

MoMA's Provenance Research Project:  A Sham?

Great essay in University of Pennsylvania's PENNumbra Guarding the Historical Record from the Nazi-Era Art Litigation Tumbling Toward The Supreme Court here.    Highly critical of the Museum of Modern Art.

A truly astonishing interview with law professor Jennifer Kreder on Illinois Public Radio here.

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Art Litigation: Alfred Flechtheim Panel in Austria To Discuss His Stolen Collection

Choyo Cactus aka "Jumping Choyo" on Dove Mountain

Below is a link to a presentation I gave in Tucson AZ on recent case developments in the federal courts on Nazi art looting.

Nazi Art Looting - Case Developments [Compatibility Mode]


Nazi art looting will be a major topic at an upcoming conference in Vienna Austria on March 23-25.  Details of the conference are here.

Austria has invited Laurie Stein to chair a presentation on Alfred Flechtheim.   

Alfred Flechtheim was a German Jewish art dealer whose art gallery was Aryanized.   Many works stolen from him are currently in museums around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Stein's report denying the Aryanization here

MoMA Expert Report Stein

The Museum of Modern Art refused to make its provenance documentaton relating to works from Alfred Flechtheim in its collection available to researchers working for the family of artist George Grosz.

More on Nazi Art Looting here.

More on Alfred Flechtheim here.

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Looting and Exploitation in Nazi-Occupied Europe by Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos

Dr. Jonathan Petropoulos delivered a lecture on Nazi art looting in Vienna last fall, focusing on the case studies of art dealers Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir, both of whom moved large quantities of artworks from Nazi Germany into the United States during and after World War II.   A link to Dr. Petropoulos' lecture on video is here at the Art Stolen from Fritz Grunbaum blog.

Dr. Petropoulos' studies on Curt Valentin and Otto Kallir are extremely important for those trying to track artworks looted by the Nazis that are now in museums and private collections in the United States and abroad.

According to a newly-released study prepared for the Swiss government by Laurie Stein, former founding director of the Pulitzer Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the largest recipient of artworks from Curt Valentin.   Other than Dr. Petropoulos, art historians have completely ignored Curt Valentin, whose clients included a Who's Who of American art museums, colleges and wealthy collectors who snapped up modern artworks as the Nazi terror forced Jews to sell the works at fire-sale prices.   Alfred Barr, the MoMA's first director, was said to be in Curt Valentin's gallery on 57th Street on a weekly basis.

Above is an image of Egon Schiele's Girl with Black Hair, you can see her image at Oberlin College's website here.  In 1998, Oberlin College's then-President Nancy Dye promised the Cleveland Plain Dealer that she would investigate Schiele expert Rudolph Leopold's claim that Girl with Black Hair, along with sixteen other Schieles in American museums, belonged to Fritz Grunbaum.  Dye never published any results from her research.  In 2009, the Cleveland Jewish News reported evidence of Grunbaum's prior ownership, the article is here. 

Art catalogues show that this artwork was in the collection of Fritz Grunbaum before he died at the Dachau Concentration Camp.  The work is at the Allen Museum at Oberlin College, which refuses to document or share its research into the work's provenance prior to its acquisition in Switzerland in 1956 by Otto Kallir.  Kallir purchased it from Gutekunst & Klipstein, a clearinghouse for Nazi-looted art in Berne, Switzerland.  Oberlin's President Marvin Krislov has refused to permit me to meet with Oberlin's art historians to discuss the matter on campus.

Oberlin College has both music and Jewish studies programs.  It is shameful that they do not study the life, career, and art collection of Fritz Grunbaum, considered Austria's greatest cabaret performer and comedian of all time, celebrated by the Viennese with Karl Farkas as inventors of the "Doppelconference" a sort of Abbot & Costello routine.

As one account of Fritz's death at Dachau has it:

It was on New Year’s Eve, 1940, that Grünbaum gave his last performance. Gravely ill with tuberculosis, he decided to put on a show for the entertainment of prisoners in the camp infirmary. Despite his sickly appearance, one of the prisoners recognised him from his glory days in Vienna. Grünbaum pleaded:


I beg of you, Fritz Grünbaum is not performing for you, but instead it is the number [and recited his camp number], who just wants to spread a little happiness on the last day of the year.

Soon after this final show he attempted suicide, but was 'saved' by the SS officers. Just two weeks later, on 14 January 1941, a death certificate was made up for him. He had succumbed, according to the Nazis, to a weak heart.

Nazi Looted Art, Fernand Leger and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Last week the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts had restituted Fernand Leger's 1911 painting "Smoke Over Rooftops" to the heirs of Alfonse Kann. The article is here. According to the article, it took the heirs ten years of researching and working with the MIA to achieve restitution.
Why such a delay? Many archives are not accessible, much research remains to be done. And there is very little research into a central figure in Nazi art looting: Curt Valentin. Valentin was mentioned in passing in Lynn Nicholas's excellent and groundbreaking work The Rape of Europa (now a film available on DVD).
Curt Valentin left Berlin in 1937 to establish an art gallery in New York City. The gallery was named after Karl Buchholz, one of the four art dealers appointed by Hitler to liquidate art considered "degenerate" by the Nazi regime. I have included a jpeg image above of a letter dated November 14, 1936 from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts to Curt Valentin stating the following:
Re: Your letter of 22 September 1936
The President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts instructed me to tell you that it would be of no objection to him if you make use of your connections with the German art circle and thereby establish supplementary export opportunities, if [this is done] outside Germany. Once you are in a foreign country, you are free to purchase works by German artists in Germany and make use of them in America. ###
The letter bears a stamp with an eagle clutching a wreathed Swastika and is found in the Jane Wade papers, Archives of American Art, microfilm reel #2322, frame 929.
The collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see provenance of El Lissitzky's Proun 2 here, the Museum of Modern Art (a search of the website finds over 40 results for Valentin including a Beckmann here) and many others are full of works purchased from Curt Valentin. When art dealer Otto Kallir came to the United States from Vienna, Austria in 1939, he went to Curt Valentin's gallery on 57th Street in New York City to pick up artworks safely transported out of Nazi Austria. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has a Beckmann portrait of Valentin here.
Curt Valentin was also the art dealer of choice for Alfred Barr, the founder of the Museum of Modern Art. As Alice Goldfarb Marquis, author of Alfred H. Barr Jr.: Missionary for the Modern, wrote to the New York Times here,
On June 30, 1939, the Fischer Gallery in Lucerne auctioned 150 items. Many dealers boycotted the sale of these stolen works. One of the bidders was Curt Valentin, a German refugee dealer, who owned the Buchholz Gallery in New York. He was there at the behest of Alfred Barr, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who provided money donated to the museum.
Mr. Valentin bought five works: Andre Derain's "Valley of the Lot at Vers," stolen from the Cologne Museum; E. L. Kirchner's "Street Scene" and Wilhelm Lehmbruck's "Kneeling Woman," both taken from the Berlin National Gallery; Paul Klee's "Around the Fish," pilfered from the Dresden Gallery, and Henri Matisse's "Blue Window," seized from the Essen Museum.
So why don't all of the other museums return the stolen artworks that they purchased through Curt Valentin? Why don't the other museums frankly acknowledge Curt Valentin's status as a Nazi agent from 1936 through the end of the war?

On Saturday, September 16, 1944, the Federal Register published an Executive Order dated May 29, 1944 describing a seizure of enemy property by the Alien Property Custodian (a U.S. official empowered by the Trading With the Enemy Act). The seizure was of Karl Buchholz's property, destined for Curt Valentin's gallery on 32 East 57th Street. The list (it looks like over 200 artworks) includes the following artist: Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Otto Dix, Werner Gilles, Erich Heckel, Carol Hofer, Heinrich Campandonc, Gerhard Marcks, Otto Mueller, E.V. Nay, Emil Nolde, Gaston Louis Roux, K. Schmidt-Rottluff, Renee Sindonis, Alex Jawlensky, Oskar Kokoschka, George Kolbe, Kaethe Kollwitz, Alfred Kubin, Wilhelm Lembruck, Fernand Leger, and August Macke.

If you wish to have a moment of tranquility in New York City, you can to to the MOMA's beautiful garden. You'll find August Rodin's Monument to Balzac (1898). It was presented in memory of Curt Valentin by his friends.