Museum of Fine Arts Bern opens exhibition entitled "Taking stock. Gurlitt in review"

At the end of 2013, the “Schwabing art find” caused a pub­lic out­cry: a huge col­lec­tion of Nazi-loot­ed works of art had ap­par­ent­ly been found in the apart­ment of Cor­nelius Gurlitt, the son of an art deal­er. Cor­nelius’ fa­ther Hilde­brand Gurlitt (1895-1956) trad­ed in art dur­ing the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist era in Ger­many, the col­lec­tion has since been ex­am­ined to es­tab­lish any pos­si­ble cas­es of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. Af­ter years of in­ten­sive prove­nance re­search, 14 cas­es were clear­ly proven to be the re­sult of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion.

The Mu­se­um of Fine Arts Bern ac­cept­ed the lega­cy of Cor­nelius Gurlitt (1932-2014) in Novem­ber 2014, and since De­cem­ber 2021, some 1,600 art­works from the es­tate of the art deal­er Hilde­brand Gurlitt have phys­i­cal­ly ar­rived at the mu­se­um.

The ex­hi­bi­tion that has now opened of­fers an in-depth look at the Gurlitt lega­cy and its schol­ar­ly in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The eth­i­cal guide­lines, le­gal foun­da­tions and re­sults of this in­ter­na­tion­al prove­nance re­search project are ex­plored in depth in in­di­vid­u­al theme-based rooms.
To the ex­hi­bi­tion