Displaying items by tag: belgium

French senator Corinne Bouchoux is urging French museum officials to take closer looks at their prized holdings as many public art collections contain works looted by Nazis during World War II. Bouchoux has led an investigative committee devoted to uncovering Nazi-looted artwork in France, which prompted her to ask museums to be more thorough in their provenance research.

Bouchoux revealed that out of the 100,000 artworks stolen from Jewish families in France and Belgium, approximately 2,000 of those works were still present in French museums. Many of these museums were designated “national museums of recovery,” which allowed the institutions to keep the works as long as they did not become property of the state and if identified, the rightful owners could reclaim them.

Bouchoux wrote her doctoral thesis, which has just been published as a book, on Nazi-looted art in France and has suggested nine proposals to direct the stolen works back to their rightful owners or offer restitution for them.

In line with Bouchoux’s efforts, the Shoal Memorial in Paris presents the exhibition Looting of the Jews: A State Policy (1940-44), which grants visitors a glimpse of the goods, including artworks, that originally belonged to Jews in France. The show is on view through September 29, 2013.

During the French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1799, French troops took Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens’ (1577-1640) The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus from the Tournai cathedral in Belgium. The work was whisked away to Paris and in 1801 it was sent to the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes, France.

The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus is one half of a diptych that was commissioned for the cathedral by the bishop of Tournai in 1635. Napoleon’s army stole both The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus and its accompanying work, The Freeing of the Souls from Purgatory, which was returned to the cathedral in 1818.

Tournai officials are adamant about having the Rubens painting returned to the cathedral. Ruby Demotte, president of the French Community of Belgium, has penned a letter to French president Francois Hollande as well as to the French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti asking that the work be sent back to Belgium. Demotte made the same attempt last year but never received a response from the French government.

Tournai recently completed a major renovation of its cathedral and are hoping to finally reunite the two Rubens paintings.

Now in its 58^th year, the Brussels Antiques and Fine Art Fair (BRAFA) will take place January 19-27, 2013 at the exhibition space, Tour & Taxis. Featuring 128 dealers from 11 countries, the fair will present works from the Middle Ages to the 20^th century including antiquities, jewelry, furniture, ceramics, drawings, engravings, Old Master as well as modern paintings, sculpture, textiles, contemporary art, photography, and much more.

After drawing in 46,000 visitors last year, BRAFA organizers have made a number of adjustments in hopes of surpassing 2012’s numbers. There will be 26 new exhibitors present and an increased emphasis has been placed on pre-Columbian art; archaeology; primitive arts; 17^th to 19^th century furniture; 19^th to 20^th century paintings, sculptures, and drawings; Asiatic arts; 20^th century decorative arts; and modern and contemporary art. BRAFA has also added a new section to this year’s fair devoted to manuscripts. Exhibitors in this section include Signatures (Paris), Librairie Thomas-Scheler (Paris), and Sanderus Antiquariaat (Ghent, Belgium).

In honor of the fair’s tenth year at Tour & Taxis, BRAFA’s architects, Volume Architecture, have designed an extraordinary entrance inspired by Byzantine architecture, particularly that of the mosques in Istanbul.

VIP guests will be given a sneak peek of the impressive fair at BRAFA’s exclusive charity event on January 18. A silent auction will be held during the evening and proceeds will benefit the Merode Foundation to support its work on educational and social projects in Brussels’ working class neighborhoods.

Exhibitor highlights include Whitford Fine Art (London), which specializes in French and British 20^th century painting and sculpture, Leysen Jewelers (Belgium), jewelers to the Belgian royal family, and Guy Pieters Gallery (Paris/Belgium), a leading force in the contemporary art world for the past 30 years.