Art Looted by Nazis Gets a New Space at the Louvre. But Is It Really Home?
Emmanuelle Polack, an art historian who did her doctoral thesis on the Parisian art market under Nazi occupation, noted
that the explanatory text in the exhibition rooms did not say that most of the looted artwork belonged to Jewish families.
Still, Ms. Polack said the Louvre had missed an opportunity to create an interactive or educational space
that visitors might seek out, rather than accidentally stumble on it while in search of the "Mona Lisa." "What is interesting is their history, the fact that they belonged to people, that they were taken to Germany and then returned," Ms. Polack said of the paintings.
While France has returned tens of thousands of looted artworks
and other objects to their rightful owners, many remain orphaned, including these paintings, which until recently hung in the museum’s regular exhibition spaces, with only a small bit of explanatory text on their descriptive plaques.
Thierry Bajou said that If you just look at the number of restitutions, there is obviously still a lot to do,
Curators at the Louvre say the new exhibition rooms are another step in the effort to make information
about looted artworks more accessible to the public, and to the victims or their heirs.
Louvre said that It seemed to us that if we didn’t create a permanent space, we were operating as we used to in the past,
