Special exhibition entitled Herkunft [un]geklärt at Mainz State Museum

On the 6th International Provenance Research Day on 12 April, the special exhibition opens entitled Herkunft [un]geklärt. Die Erwerbungen des Altertumsmuseums und der Gemäldegalerie der Stadt Mainz 1933-1945 [Origin [not]clarified. The Acquisitions of the Museum of Classical Antiquities and Mainz Municipal Art Gallery 1933-1945] at Mainz State Museum, which is run by the Rhineland-Palatinate General Directorate for Cultural Heritage (GDKE). The exhibition can be viewed until 15 September 2024.

Surprising and impressive outcomes emerged from the multi-year provenance research project, which focused on some 375 acquisitions made by the Museum of Classical Antiquities and Mainz Municipal Art Gallery – Mainz State Museum’s predecessor institutions – between 1933 and 1945, though the insights gained are also shocking to some extent and in many respects still leave questions unanswered.

“In the course of our research we also gained fundamental insights into the art that was to be found in Mainz under National Socialism – a subject that has hardly been investigated to date,” says curator Dorothee Glawe, who is also responsible for provenance research at Mainz State Museum. The exhibition explores what the museums collected, which now long-forgotten collectors lived in the city, which art dealers flourished before, during and after the Nazi era, and which sources were used by the municipal collections to acquire their art.

As early as the 1990s, employees at Mainz State Museum listed artworks that had clearly been confiscated from Jewish owners, and they published these lists with the aim of tracking down the former owners. An initial project was carried out between 2016 and 2019 to systematically investigate the origins of these holdings.

Since 2019, a second provenance research project has focussed on the acquisitions made by the Museum of Classical Antiquities and Mainz Municipal Gallery between 1933 and 1945. The aim of this research is to identify items of cultural property in the collection that were confiscated as a result of Nazi persecution. The special exhibition presents the results of this multi-year research project.
The project was funded by the German Lost Art Foundation.
To the projects:

Systematische Prüfung der Erwerbungen der Gemäldegalerie und des Altertumsmuseums der Stadt Mainz in den Jahren 1933-1945. [Systematic investigation of the acquisitions of Mainz Municipal Gallery and the Museum of Classical Antiquities in the years 1933-1945]

Recherche nach Provenienzen und Besitzverhältnissen von widerrechtlich entzogenen Gemälden jüdischen Besitzes [Research into the provenance and ownership of illegally seized Jewish-owned paintings]

To the exhibition: https://landesmuseum-mainz.de/de/ausstellungen/ausstellungvorschau/herkunft-ungeklaert/