Concealed Histories: Uncovering the Story of Nazi Looting
Fascinating online talk from the Victoria and Albert Museum on work they are doing to research the provenance of items in their collections. Jacques Schuhmacher, provenance curator for the Gilbert Collection at the museum, talked us through a brief history of the confiscation and forced sale of Jewish property by the Nazi’s from 1933 when they came to power. He told us how even up to 1998 the Victoria and Albert Museum, like many others, kept sparse provenance records for items in their collections just recording who gave the item or who it was bought from and the names of any famous owners. He then talked about research he had down on items in the Gilbert Collection and told us some of the stories of the objects. For example the Louis XVI gold box shown here was owned by Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, a Jewish banker, who had had to submit a catalogue of his collection for the Nazi’s which they then used as a blue print for what they wished to take. In 1938 he was for...