Christie's: the return of works of art confiscated by the Nazis at the center of all 2023

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of this key international agreement, Christie's returns department celebrates its principles through a cycle of exceptional events, in France and abroad. Throughout 2023, Reflecting on Restitution will retrace the great restitutions of history and will open the debate among academics, jurists, researchers and interested parties first in Paris then in Amsterdam, Vienna, Berlin, London, New York and the United States as well as in Tel Aviv.

Reflecting on Restitution will be inaugurated on January 27 with an exhibition at Christie's Paris

In December 1998, the US State Department and the Holocaust Memorial Museum brought together a large number of decision-makers from 44 countries and 13 non-governmental organizations in Washington, as well as witnesses from, in particular, art institutions and sales houses, to raise the issue of the heavy losses and confiscations of works of art during the Holocaust period. Participants publicly defined and adopted the eleven “Washington Conference Principles for Nazi-Confiscated Art,” opening new avenues for victims of looting and their heirs, facilitating the search, location, and reappropriation of their heritage and their history. 

The Washington Principles have led to an unprecedented wave of restitutions

The Washington Principles have made it possible to recover the provenance of objects and the history of families from oblivion, to ensure their conservation and to promote new approaches to ensure the resolution of questions of belonging. 

Richard Aronowitz, Director of the Restitution Department: “The Washington Principles are the very basis of the work carried out in recent years by Christie's restitution experts: documenting the history and changes of ownership undergone, between 1933 and 1945, by the works of art that the house intends to put up for sale . As soon as we discover a loss, a pernicious change of ownership, or a forced sale that would not have been adequately addressed postwar, the Washington Principles give us the means to answer these questions, even several decades after the facts".

From 27 January to 10 February 2023, Christie's Paris

From 27 January to 10 February 2023 Raphaël Denis explores the question of the looting of works of art that took place in France during the Second World War. Artist and researcher, Raphaël Denis has been developing a series of installations entitled Normal Law of Errors for almost ten years.

As for the looted works to which the artist chooses to devote himself, only portraits will be found.
The fact of focusing his work on works that represent a human presence and ideally portraits - thus excluding landscapes and still lifes from his field - is anything but casual; in fact, this choice only increases the immediate link that the spectator can establish, by mental projection, between the looted work and its owner looted during the war.

This exhibition is the first stage in a series of events organized by Christie's around the world in 2023, all dedicated to the field of restitution, on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Washington Conference Principles applicable to works of art confiscated by the Nazis.

Exhibition and meeting calendar

• March 2023, Amsterdam, a meeting and an autograph session on the occasion of the publication of the essay The Diary Keepers, in which journalist and writer Nina Siegal delves into seven diaries written during the occupation in the Netherlands. A moving collection, nourished by unpublished stories written after 1940 by both Jewish citizens and Nazi war criminals. Currently based in Amsterdam, Nina Siegal is a regular contributor to The New York Times.

• 4 May 2023, Vienna, the Californian lawyer of Christie's Vienna engaged in the return of works of art, Randy Shoenberg will present in Vienna a lecture on the famous case of Gustav Klimt's paintings returned from the Belvedere Palace to Maria Altmann, heiress of their former owner, Ferdinand Bloch -Bauer, famous Czech sugar magnate.

• June 2023, London
Christie's parent company will host a panel discussion on emerging trends in provenance research at its London salons. An initiative that falls within both the 25th anniversary of the Washington Principles and the 80th anniversary of the Inter-Allied Declaration against acts of plunder perpetrated in territories controlled or occupied by the enemy, signed in London in 1943.

• Summer 2023, Berlin
This coming summer, a guided walk will be organized in the heart of the neighborhoods where Jewish art dealers and auction houses owned by German Jews once operated, as well as the places where the looted works of art were located. The visit will be filmed and freely accessible on the dedicated Christie's website.

• Fall 2023, New York
During the autumn, a round table in its halls at the Rockefeller Center to talk about the evolution of the restitution process following the Washington Conference.

• December 19, 2023, Tel-Aviv
In collaboration with the Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, a conference dedicated to restitution and provenance research, organized within the museum itself, will close the cycle, as part of the 25th anniversary of the Washington Principles.