Answer to 'The Monuments Men'

The Journey of the Paintings is a somewhat innocuous-sounding title for the remarkable exhibition currently on show at Lentos Art Museum in Linz. This title does not necessarily suggest National Socialist art looting, let alone the dramatic events of the final weeks of the Second World War as memorialised by George Clooney in his film The Monuments Men (2013). Clooney exaggerated and simplified certain elements of the story – which he was perfectly at liberty to do in the name of artistic licence. The reality in the last year of the war,1945, was much, much more complicated – and this is very much borne out by this exhibition, which is being held to mark the Salzkammergut’s nomination as “European Capital of Culture" in 2024.

Located to the east of Salzburg, the Salzkammergut region became a favoured place of safekeeping and storage for valuable works of art from a wide variety of provenances during the Second World War. With their ideal climatic conditions and remote location, the salt mines were secure sites for this purpose.

A diverse range of works of art were stored in the tunnels near Altaussee, in Lauffen near Bad Ischl and at other locations; these items might have been from public ownership, churches, private collections, museums, monasteries or palaces. They included undisputed property of the depositors as well as examples of National Socialist art theft from Jewish collectors, especially those of the Sonderauftrag Linz holdings. Among the prominent museums that found a safe haven for their collections in the Salzkammergut were Munich’s Schack-Galerie and also the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Belvedere in Vienna. Many works of art had previously been stored elsewhere before being transferred to the Salzkammergut – at Neuschwanstein Castle or Kremsmünster Abbey, for example – but as the war progressed, these other sites no longer appeared to offer sufficient security. After the end of the war, the storage depots were cleared as quickly as possible. The exhibition provides a very vivid account of all these transport operations, consistently focusing primarily on the works of art themselves. Yet it remains to be seen whether the elaborate visualisations of the relocation efforts, including some on film, really yield sufficient insights to deepen our understanding of what happened.

This aspect on its own would provide sufficient material for an exhibition, but The Journey of the Paintings does not stop there. It also addresses the Salzkammergut region as a retreat for art dealers , including those from Berlin, for example, who were able to continue to pursue their business dealings here in rural seclusion. Special attention is paid to Wolfgang Gurlitt, not to be confused with his cousin Hildebrand Gurlitt, who was in the same line of work: like Hildebrand, Wolfgang was a highly ambivalent individual who was able to trade successfully during the Nazi era despite having suffered the pressure of persecution himself to some extent. Wolfgang Gurlitt continued his activities in Linz in the post-war period, going on to become director of Neue Galerie Linz. Since this gallery later became Lentos Art Museum, it took on a potentially incriminated legacy, at least in part, since it included works from Gurlitt’s collection that had belonged to Neue Galerie. Delving into this aspect is another focus of the current exhibition:

as such, it sheds light on the hangers-on and the profiteers as well as the victims. An exemplary case of the latter is the touching fate of the Munks, a Jewish family, based on a pencil study for a portrait of a woman by Gustav Klimt (Ria Munk III). Villa Munk in Bad Aussee was “aryanised” and members of the family were murdered.

Is it even possible to do justice to all these themes in a single exhibition? The answer is: yes, it is. Visiting the exhibition is fairly demanding, but you leave the museum enriched with fresh insights and experiences.

One reason for this is that the exhibition organisers have opted to consistently unfold their narratives and the history of the period by focusing on the exhibits themselves, i.e. the works of art. One strange, inconspicuous exhibit is particularly impressive, for instance, exemplifying the complexity of voluntary and involuntary art transfers: it is a greatly reduced model of the iconic Ghent Altarpiece created in the 1430s which passed through some highly unlikely changes of location and ownership in the course of the centuries. Two panels of the altarpiece were in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin from the time they were purchased in the 1820s until after the First World War. This model was made around 1900 from black and white photographs mounted on wooden frames so as to convey an impression of the altar as a whole. What does this have to do with the Salzkammergut? In 1944 the “Ghent Altarpiece” – which had since been moved from Ghent to the south of France – was taken to Altaussee by German units and then recovered there in 1945 by the “Monuments Men” – the dramatic climax of the film of the same name.

Another positive feature of this ambitious exhibition is the fact that the texts are written with unusual clarity and precision: the explanations provided are clear-cut and succinct, no matter how complex the subject matter. This applies particularly to the theme of Sonderauftrag Linz, an undertaking which not only served to establish Hitler’s planned museum in Linz – as is often superficially implied – but also procured items for distribution among numerous existing museums, often from confiscated Jewish collections. The texts bear the signature of co-curator Birgit Schwarz, someone who has conducted intense research into Sonderauftrag Linz for decades and is now an outstanding expert on this complex system of art procurement and distribution operated by the National Socialists.

An exhibition that is highly commended and recommended – with one caveat. The presentation occupies the walls of the large hall on the first floor of the Lentos (with the exception of an adjoining room), leaving a large empty space at the centre. In this central space, the curators have opted for an art installation – an idea that is by no means far-fetched, since the Lentos is not least a museum of contemporary art. The arrangement of numerous items of furniture from three quarters of a century of German history in this space is presumably intended as a commentary and counterpoint to the exhibition theme, but it is not convincing. Instead, the visitor is put in mind of the modest aesthetic standards of a furniture store’s motley showroom and is left somewhat perplexed. It is unlikely that anyone will go to Linz for the sole purpose of viewing this installation of course. Otherwise, the Lentos has succeeded in providing a compelling, multi-faceted account, setting a benchmark within the genre of provenance exhibitions. The accompanying catalogue summarises the state of knowledge on all the subjects addressed.    

Lentos Art Museum Linz
www.lentos.at
The Journey of the Paintings. Hitler’s cultural politics, art trade and storage during the NS era in the Salzkammergut
On until 8 September 2024
Exhibition catalogue Die Reise der Bilder, published by Hirmer, Munich, price EUR 39.00