13 minute read
PROVENANCE RESEARCH
THE KHANENKO-MUSEUM IN KYIV
Anna Schultz
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ANNA SCHULTZ is Research Associate of the Art Collection of the Akademie der Künste.
YURII STEFANYAK, born in 1990 in the city of Dnipro, is a freelance photographer based in Kyiv. His work focuses on documenting cultural and social life in Ukraine. The Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts in Kyiv is home to an outstanding collection of European, Asian, and Islamic artworks, that was put together by the collectors Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko. It is held in their city villa and was donated to the city and its citizens upon their deaths.
With the outbreak of the Russia's war of aggression, the larger part of the collection was conserved, as it had been previously during the Second World War. As part of the exhibition Provenance Research, the Academy is presenting fourteen photographs by Yurii Stefanyak.
The photographs show the museum rooms void of human life, with shadows of paintings on walls with silk wall-coverings, empty display cases, and pedestals without objects – the body of a hibernating museum, which, stripped of its treasures, functions as an empty shell.
However, the Khanenko Museum remains open to the public as a meeting point, a space for exchange, hope, and contemplation. Despite many museum workers having fled the country and the museum facing public funding cuts just like other Ukrainian public institutions, the exhibition halls are being used for interventions by contemporary artists and concerts.
Museums and other cultural institutions in Ukraine are under acute threat by Russia’s war of aggression. As places in which the country’s identity is engrained, museums and other such institutions are – despite alleged protection by the Hague Conventions – prime targets, as was demonstrated on 10 October when several missiles exploded in the immediate vicinity of the Khanenko Museum. The staff and collections were unharmed, but the historic building was severely damaged. Russian attacks on cultural institutions – on the same day in Kyiv, the Philharmonic Hall, the nearby Shevchenko Museum, and the University were attacked – exemplify the very real threat to cultural institutions.
The destruction and looting of museums, libraries, archives, and churches by Russian troops are a daily occurrence. Furthermore, a lack of resources and a shortage of the materials needed for the security, evacuation, and safekeeping of cultural assets is proving increasingly problematic.
Ukraine Art Aid (https://www.dug-ww.com/ Kulturgutschutz_Ukraine) is raising funds for direct and uncomplicated support of cultural institutions in Ukraine.
Talk as part of the programme of the exhibition Provenance Research
Wednesday 16 November 2022, 7 p.m. Cultural Property Losses Today – A Look at Ukraine (DE/EN) With Olena Balun (Netzwerk Kulturgutschutz Ukraine) Yuliya Vaganova (Khanenko – Museum, Kyiv) Olaf Hamann (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) Moderation: Barbara Welzel (TU Dortmund)
THE (HI)STORIES BEHIND THE ARTWORKS
Werner Heegewaldt
“Degenerate Art”: Max Kaus, Havelziehbrücke, 1931, oil on canvas.
The question of ownership with regard to the colonial heritage on display in European museums is currently the subject of heated debate. These discussions once again underline how important it is for cultural institutions to investigate the origins of their collections and to make the results of those investigations public. As the examples of the West African Benin Bronzes or the Luf-boat from the South Pacific compellingly demonstrate, the scope of the issue extends beyond questions of legality or ownership. This is about the intangible value of art as well as the resolution and recognition – and redress, in the best-case scenarios – of historical injustices. Works of art and cultural assets have a role to play in shaping identity, which is why their ownership carries such emotional significance. This applies equally to the cultures of their origin, the people they belonged to and their descendants, and, of course, to the museums and collections which are tasked with their preservation and display. One of the challenges of provenance research is to investigate and draw attention back to the buried, sometimes suppressed stories of the origins of artworks and their owners. The fact that the loss of such artworks was often linked to war and repression makes such investigations all the more crucial for all involved, whether concerning the vastly different situations of items taken in the colonial past, those looted by the Nazis, or objects confiscated by the East German regime. Only precise knowledge about a specific case enables an assessment and a weighing up of legal, historical, and political arguments.
Since the Washington Principles of 1998, provenance research has become a fundamental task for all collecting institutions. Despite its legally non-binding status, the agreement is an effective instrument that establishes the obligation to identify works of art confiscated during the Nazi period and to seek fair and just solutions between former and current owners of those artworks. At the same time, such research efforts also instigate a critical examination of the history of the cultural institutions themselves. Not only are these institutions forced to question their own self-conception, they must also examine the historical and political context in which the decisions to acquire objects were made and determine whether these decisions still hold validity today.
Whilst compelling reports regarding art looted by the Nazis or items of colonial heritage attract significant media attention and thus build awareness of the topic of provenance research, the complexities of this task and of the problems and questions it brings to the fore are generally only familiar to experts. The exhibition Provenance Research aims to make this topic accessible to a wider audience and propagate an understanding of the complexity of making fair and credible statements about ownership and proprietorship, exploring also what political and moral leeway is needed in order to reach mutually amicable solutions. Only in this way can we achieve an understanding around differing assessments and a greater social acceptance for decisions regarding restitution.
New insights into the provenance of paintings, books, archival materials, and objects from the collections of the Akademie der
The art collection of Otto Nagel: Oskar Fischer, Porträt von Otto Nagel, around 1921, oil on cardboard.
Künste are the starting points for the exhibition. Visitors are offered new perspectives on familiar works of art and are given opportunities to learn how provenance research promises new insight that extends beyond settling questions of ownership. The focus is on three very different areas of art provenance and ownership history: first, the identification of Nazi-looted art that is now part of the Academy’s own holdings and the role of the Akademie der Künste during the Nazi period; secondly, the search for the collections of the Prussian Akademie der Künste that were lost during the Second World War; and finally, the critical reappraisal of efforts by the East German (GDR) state apparatus to take possession of valuable art objects. Based on selected examples, the exhibition sheds light on the investigative methods used, various ways of securing evidence, and the stories behind the artworks themselves. These stories are often the result of painstaking but fascinating research in which very different kinds of leads are followed and pieces of the puzzle are put together to recreate an artwork’s – not always complete – biography. The objects include a rediscovered book from the lost library of the philosopher Walter Benjamin, remnants of the collection of the art critic Alfred Kerr that were confiscated by the Gestapo, a sketchbook from Max Liebermann’s estate, oil sketches by Carl Blechen that were thought to have been lost, and the private art collection of painter and Academy President Otto Nagel that, after his death, was the target of East German cultural authorities. The sculpture Urania is an example of how provenance history can present a different approach to understanding art. The monu-
Provenance unknown, Urania, 18th-century sculpture, sandstone.
mental 18th-century sculpture greets visitors to the exhibition. Embodying the turbulent history of a community of artists whose work was either lost or destroyed during the war, Urania now returns to the Academy for the first time. Originally adorning the old Academy building on Unter den Linden as part of a larger sculptural ensemble, today she stands in Heinrich-von-KleistPark in Berlin’s Schöneberg district, covered with wounds inflicted by shrapnel and vandalism. Her provenance and original purpose, however, remain concealed from history.
“In the Grenzburg… 1 Kaus (for me)”, wrote the artist and educator, Friedrich Schult succinctly in his journal entry of 28 May 1945. “Kaus” referred to the 1931 painting Havelziehbrücke (“Havel drawbridge”) by Max Kaus. In the context of the “degenerate art” campaign, Nazi authorities had removed the painting from Munich’s Pinakothek and handed it over to the art dealer Bernhard A. Böhmer “for utilisation”. Böhmer, one of the leading art dealers in the Third Reich, was involved in numerous sales of artworks owned by Jewish people. However, he kept this particular painting, along with many other works considered degenerate, in storage at the Grenzburg location that served as his depot in Güstrow. After Böhmer’s suicide on 3 May 1945, Schult held it there “for protection” against seisure by the Red Army. Both men had lived in Güstrow and knew each other in the context of administering the estate of the sculptor Ernst Barlach. Finally, thanks to Schult’s widow, the painting found its way to the Akademie der Künste in 1981. The Munich collection was long unaware of the painting’s present-day location; it is still listed as lost in its 1990 catalogue of works. This case demonstrates, on the one hand, how convoluted and opaque changes in ownership often are. On the other hand, it shows how different a legal assessment can be from a moral one. Morally, the painting was removed from the museum under government pressure, making a return the obvious solution. The legal assessment, however, comes to a different conclusion. A 1938 law, which is still valid to this day, retrospectively legitimised the seising of “degenerate art” without compensation and prevented museums from being able to reclaim confiscated works after the end of the war.
LOST, MISSING, RETURNED
Carl Blechen’s Mühlental bei Amalfi (“Mill valley near Amalfi”) had long been considered lost in the war. In 2019, the Akademie der Künste succeeded in reacquiring the oil sketch from private ownership. It is now on public display in the exhibition for the first time. The story of the painting, which had been stolen from a holding site in 1945, sheds light on the losses inflicted by the war on the Academy’s collection – another central topic of provenance research. Until 1945, the Prussian Academy possessed an outstanding collection of fine art. This collection was composed of Old Master drawings and graphics, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Wenceslaus Hollar, as well as entire estates of works, for example those of the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow, the engraver Daniel Nicklaus Chodowiecki, and the landscape painter Carl Blechen. During the Second World War, much of the art collection was moved to safe locations for protection against bombing raids. Chosen locations included the flak bunker at Berlin Zoo, the Neue Münze in Berlin, an inoperative potash mine in the Rhön region, and various castles in Silesia. As a result of war and the looting and confiscation by trophy brigades of the Red Army in its aftermath, over three-quarters of the collection are now thought to be destroyed or, at the very least, missing. The precise number of lost works is unknown, since the inventories and card catalogues were also removed, and exact information about the prints is missing completely. However, offers from private parties and auction houses, as well as information about artworks in Polish museums and in the former Soviet Union, are evidence that at least some of the collection has survived. Determining the whereabouts of these artworks is a central task of provenance research. For art historians, even information about which works have survived and where they are located is a significant piece of new knowledge. One example is the estate of the painter and former Academy Director Eduard Daege. Close cooperation with the Khanenko Museum in Kyiv led to the discovery of a number of Daege's drawings that had been kept in storage there. Working
Remains of a library: Volumes from the possession of the art critic Alfred Kerr, restituted to the heirs by the Berlin State Library.
together with Ukrainian colleagues, the Academy is now planning a digitisation and research project that would bring the works scattered across three collections together on one virtual platform. Due to the war in Ukraine and the resulting need to evacuate the collection, however, the project has been temporarily put on hold.
ART OWNERSHIP IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF GDR CULTURAL POLICY
Provenance researchers are also increasingly focusing on the efforts of the state apparatus of the GDR to acquire private art possessions and use them for its own purposes. One such example is the artistic estate of Otto Nagel. The painter and former President of the Akademie der Künste (East) had an extensive art collection, which included works by artist friends like Hans Baluschek, Käthe Kollwitz, and Heinrich Zille in addition to his own works. Although Nagel, as a cultural functionary, was criticised for his attitudes in the formalism debate and in the literary movement “Bitterfelder Weg” (“Bitterfeld way”), his realistic and socially critical work as an artist was indisputedly seen as part of East Germany’s cultural heritage. Following his death in 1973, at the initiative of his widow Walli Nagel, the Otto-Nagel-Haus was opened in East Berlin, where his artwork was exhibited until the mid-1990s. The withdrawal of his daughter, art historian Sibylle Schallenberg-Nagel, and her husband Götz, from the museum’s management team in 1978 was an early indication of the simmering disagreements between the family and the GDR’s cultural authorities. At the core of the conflict was the question of control over the private art collection, which aroused the greed of the state. After Nagel’s widow died and the family’s political influence diminished, the heirs were confronted with an exorbitant tax bill. For the purposes of avoiding the payment of inheritance and property tax totalling 2.5 million East German marks, the heiress Sibylle Schallenberg-Nagel was forced to accept the offer of donating the artworks to the East German Akademie der Künste instead. Over 300 paintings and drawings were incorporated into the art collection of the Academy. In return, the heiress was permitted to keep the parental home as well as certain selected works of art. As a legal matter, the case was thus resolved. After 1990, requests for repatriation were rejected in two instances. Nevertheless, the approach taken by the GDR authorities raises several questions.
The exhibition shows the breadth of research into historical provenance and the complexities of its associated problems and resultant assessments. For the collecting institutions, this “provenance research” amounts to a commitment to take responsibility and constitutes crucial efforts against the tide of forgetting. Each story told about the historical background of an artwork helps to uphold the memory of the people who created, owned, or were forced to give up that work of art.
Verso of Carl Blechen, Mühlental bei Amalfi, 1829, oil on paper on cardboard, with numerous notes on provenance. The repurchase was funded by the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States (Kulturstiftung der Länder) and the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung.
WERNER HEEGEWALDT is Director of the Archives of the Akademie der Künste.
“PROVENANCE RESEARCH” An Exhibition at the Akademie der Künste Pariser Platz, 29 October 2022–22 January 2023
