Clemens Toussaint profile

From the Sunday Times, an article on the man behind the Goudstikker collection recovery effort:

This £22m old master is stolen property. So why is it on display in an American museum? And why won’t they give it back to its rightful owner? It is one of thousands of priceless works of art that were looted by the Nazis and ended up scattered across the world in respectable institutions. Clemens Toussaint has vowed to track them down and get them back. And they call him a merciless plunderer.

A business I wish I had gotten into, and not just for the money.

Toussaint stumbled on his career by chance. . .

. . . research took him to the archives of one German museum, where he found a boxful of appeals from Jewish families asking about works of art that used to belong to them, had been looted by the Nazis and were now hanging in its galleries. They had all fallen on deaf ears. . .

Toussaint learnt that a victorious America had returned a mere fraction of the looted art it had seized from the Nazis, and that had gone to state authorities in Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands. No effort had been made to find the rightful owners.

And when rightful owners made an unwelcome appearance, they were uniformly rebuffed. Now it's payback time.

ADDENDUM: Much more detail and commentary over at Barista.

Posted by David on September 29, 2006 9:25 AM