MFA
Bought a membership to the MFA yesterday. I haven’t been there in a few years. I was looking for something to do yesterday so I decided to go check out their new Egypt exhibit “The Secrets of Tomb 10A“.
It was pretty interesting. Crowded. A 1915 expedition uncovered the plundered tomb of a very wealthy provincial governor of the Middle Kingdom. All of the gold and jewels were gone, but everything else was left, although the ransacking had damaged much of it. What was left was acres of supplies (food, tools) and model ships, apparently to convey the dead through the afterlife.
I wonder what ancient Egyptian beer tasted like.
After Egypt, I just sort of moseyed and eventually ended up in Europe. For the last several years, the MFA has come under increasing pressure to investigate the provenance of some of the artwork. Some may have been looted or seized from Jews during the Holocaust.Their answer is the WWII Provenance Project.
It’s kind of hard to say, apparently. It some cases it’s clear, in some cases it’s not. I hadn’t thought of it before, but take the example of one piece. One piece of art was known to belong to a Jewish art dealer at one point. That dealer later died in Auschwitz. The question is: was this art stolen by the Nazis or had he sold it earlier? He was a dealer after all, and bought and sold artwork as part of his business. It’s entirely possible he had bought this piece on someone’s behalf, or possessed it for as little as 20 minutes before selling it. It’s also entirely possible that it was among the items stolen. Theft is one are where the Nazis weren’t as exacting in their record keeping as they were in other areas. Items undergoing provenance discovery are labeled with an informative information sheet describing the situation.
As I think about it, it’s a really difficult situation. On the one hand, if the art were stolen, it should be returned to the rightful heir. But to effect that return, there should be proof that it was actually stolen. You don’t want to give up a multi-million dollar piece of art without some proof. On the other hand, proof may not exist. What to do in that case? Can you just turn over millions of dollars on request? With no proof, how do you know it’s not a fraudulent claim? That’s certainly not unheard of either.
So in the short term, I suppose this is about the best compromise possible.
It was an enjoyable day. I’ll go back.
