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14/3/2009

Two Exhibitions

The Jewish Museum, New York

Reclaimed:
Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker

The Jewish Museum will present an exhibition of rarely-seen Old Master paintings entitled Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker from March 15 through August 2, 2009. Reclaimed reveals the extraordinary legacy of Jacques Goudstikker, a preeminent art dealer in Amsterdam, whose vast collection of masterpieces fell victim, and was almost lost forever, to the Nazi practice of looting cultural properties.

In 2006, after years of working with a team of art historians and legal experts, Goudstikker’s family successfully reclaimed 200 of his paintings from the Dutch government – one of the largest claims to Nazi-looted art ever resolved. Featuring 40 of the finest examples of the recovered art, along with original documents and photographs, the exhibition reveals Goudstikker’s influence as a collector, art dealer, tastemaker and impresario; and celebrates the historic restitution of the artworks to the rightful heir. Ten of the paintings on view have never been exhibited in North America before. Also included are 20 original documents and photographs relating to Goudstikker’s life – most significantly, a notebook inventorying his gallery’s holdings.

Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940) was one of the most important and influential art dealers in Europe during the period between the First and Second World Wars. The Goudstikker Gallery, located in a grand house on one of Amsterdam’s prominent canals, dealt primarily in Dutch Old Masters from the Golden Age, yet also offered other Northern European and Italian paintings. Goudstikker sold paintings to leading collectors and museums in Europe and the United States, mounted groundbreaking exhibitions and had a profound influence on collecting patterns. His impressive and historically important collection rose to international acclaim.

As prominent members of society, Goudstikker and his wife, Dési, led luxurious and exuberant lives, but the world they inhabited would soon be lost. Due to the rising threat of the Third Reich and because he was Jewish, Goudstikker was forced to flee the Netherlands with his wife and their year-old son, Eduard (nicknamed “Edo”), in May 1940 shortly after the Nazi invasion. Jacques died in a tragic accident on board ship while escaping by sea.

Goudstikker left behind his collection of approximately 1,400 works of art, the bulk of which were taken to Germany after the looting of the Goudstikker Gallery by Herman Göring, Hitler’s second in command and a rapacious art collector. Göring’s henchman, Alois Miedl, ran the gallery throughout the war under the Goudstikker name, profiting from its remaining stock of artworks and respected reputation.

When World War II ended, over 200 Goudstikker paintings were located by the Allies in Germany and returned to the Netherlands with the expectation that they would be restituted to the rightful owner. Despite Dési’s efforts to recover them, the Dutch government kept the works in its national collections. Eventually, Dési and her second husband, A.E. D. von Saher, who adopted Edo, left the United States, where they had settled, to return to the Netherlands, where she died in 1996. Edo survived her by only a few months.

Edo’s widow, Marei von Saher, initiated the claims process for restitution in 1997 at a time of renewed interest in restituting Nazi-looted artworks in the Netherlands and after new information about the fate of the Goudstikker collection became available to her. The small black notebook Jacques Goudstikker had used meticulously to inventory his collection was found with him at the time of his death and later became a crucial piece of evidence in the battle to reclaim his art. Finally, after a nearly decade-long battle, the Dutch government agreed on February 6, 2006 to restitute 200 of the paintings looted by the Nazis.

Jacques Goudstikker’s inventory included Italian Renaissance works, early German and Netherlandish paintings, seventeenth-century Dutch Old Masters, French and Italian Rococo artworks, and nineteenth-century French and Northern European paintings. Although his offerings became increasingly diverse – he can be credited with expanding the Dutch art market as well as collectors’ tastes – his specialty remained Northern Baroque art. He catered to the leading collectors of his day, selling paintings not only to Dutch museums (such as the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam) but also to The Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and to Andrew Mellon for the then-fledgling National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. A natural impresario, Goudstikker delighted in organizing national as well as international art fairs, festivals, and exhibitions, some of which had enduring significance for the history of art. He was responsible for what was at the time the largest exhibition of Peter Paul Rubens’s art in the Netherlands, and the only show ever of the landscapes of Salomon van Ruysdael, among others.

Highlights in the exhibition include Jan Steen’s dramatic Sacrifice of Iphigenia of 1671, two splendid river landscapes by Salomon van Ruysdael, a rare early marine painting by Salomon’s nephew Jacob van Ruisdael, an atmospheric View of Dordrecht by Jan van Goyen, and Jan van der Heyden’s View of Nyenrode Castle on the Vecht – the country estate that Goudstikker himself owned and opened to the public each summer in the 1930s. On view are also Pieter Lastman’s 1619 David Gives Uriah a Letter for Joab as well as excellent still life paintings and portraits such as Hieronymus Galle’s Still Life with Flowers in a Vase, and Ferdinand Bol’s Louise-Marie Gonzaga de Nevers.

In addition to viewing fine paintings, museum visitors will be offered an opportunity to reflect on the inequities of war, the looting of cultural property during the Holocaust, and ongoing efforts to recover artworks stolen during World War II.

Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker was organized by Peter C. Sutton, Executive Director and CEO of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, who also wrote the accompanying catalogue. Karen Levitov, Associate Curator at The Jewish Museum, has served as managing curator for the New York City version of this exhibition. Published by The Bruce Museum and The Jewish Museum in association with Yale University Press, the lavishly illustrated 257-page catalogue is available at The Jewish Museum’s Cooper Shop and bookstores everywhere for $60.

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The Danube Exodus
The Rippling Currents of the River, By Peter Forgács and The Labyrinth Project

In 1939, Captain Nándor Andrásovits ferried a group of Eastern European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution down the Danube River to a ship on the Black Sea that would carry them to Palestine. The following year, Captain Andrásovits evacuated émigré German farmers from their adopted homeland of Bessarabia (modern-day Ukraine and Moldova) after Soviet re-annexation, and transported them to the “safety” of the Third Reich. Remarkably, as an amateur filmmaker Captain Andrásovits documented both journeys, providing a unique eyewitness account of these historic events.

In 1998, the innovative Hungarian artist and filmmaker Péter Forgács adapted Captain Andrásovits’s 8mm footage as the basis of his film The Danube Exodus. Four years later, Forgács teamed up with The Labyrinth Project, an art collective at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, to re-edit Forgács’s film with forty hours of additional footage, transforming it into an interactive experience.

The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River, By Peter Forgács and The Labyrinth Project, on view at The Jewish Museum from March 15 through August 2, 2009, draws together images, words, and sounds to create a multimedia exhibition about the displacement of different ethnic minorities, and the possible similarities between the challenges they face. The installation immerses visitors in three interwoven historical narratives, which they access with a touch-screen computer and view on five large screens: the escape of the Eastern European Jewish refugees; the resettlement of émigré German farmers who were relocated to occupied Poland; and the story of Captain Andrásovits and the Danube River. Viewers can select which stories they watch, and in what order, exposing the process of selection, juxtaposition, and omission in the writing and rewriting of history. The projected images are accompanied by an immersive sound track including ambient sounds of the river and harbor, the mechanical rhythms of ships’ engines, regional music from the period, songs and prayers of the refugees, voiceovers of Captain Andrásovits and his passengers, and the minimalist music of composer Tibor Szemzö. Additional information, including recent interviews with survivors, can be found at two computer stations and on a historical timeline in an adjacent gallery. The exhibition and a related lecture are part of Extremely Hungary, a yearlong festival showcasing contemporary Hungarian arts.

Péter Forgács (b. 1950) is a media artist and independent filmmaker based in Budapest, whose works have been exhibited worldwide. Since 1978 he has produced over thirty films. He is best known for his haunting films that reorchestrate found footage, particularly the Private Hungary series of award winning films based on home movies from the 1930s and 1960s, which document ordinary lives that were soon ruptured by historic events occurring off screen. His work is in the collection of such museums as the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou & Museé d’Art Moderne and The Getty Museum Special Collection.

The Labyrinth Project is an art collective and research initiative on database narrative at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, California. Since 1997 it has been producing interactive documentaries in collaboration with independent artists, juxtaposing fictional and historical story elements in provocative ways.

This installation is based on Péter Forgács’s 1998 documentary film The Danube Exodus and its research materials, produced by Lumen Film.

The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River is directed by Péter Forgács, in collaboration with The Labyrinth Project: Marsha Kinder, Rosemary Comella, Kristy H. A. Kang, and Scott Mahoy; produced by Marsha Kinder; music by Tibor Szemzö; sound design by Jim McKee, Earwax Productions.

A related lecture given by Péter Forgács, The Archaeology of Memory, will take place at The Jewish Museum, Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, on Wednesday, March 18th at 6:30 pm. Mr. Forgács will discuss the relationship between memory and art in his work. The evening will also include a screening of his film, Maelstrom (60 min). Tickets for the March 18th lecture are: $15 general public, $12 students/over 65, and $10 Jewish Museum members. Lecture tickets and program information may be found by visiting www.thejewishmuseum.org or calling the box office at 212.423.3337.

The exhibition and lecture are part of Extremely Hungary, a yearlong festival showcasing contemporary Hungarian visual, performing, and literary arts in New York and Washington, D.C., throughout 2009. The festival is organized by the Hungarian Cultural Center in New York, which sponsors a range of programs celebrating Hungary’s past, present and future, and is made possible in part by funding from the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture. For more information, please visit the festival’s website at http://www.extremelyhungary.org.


Image: Jan Josefsz van Goyen, View of the Oude Maas near Dordrecht, 1651. Oil on panel 26 1/4 x 38 1/4 in. (66.7 x 97 cm). Dordrechts Museum, Dordrecht

Press contacts: Anne Scher
or Alex Wittenberg 212.423.3271 or pressoffice@thejm.org

The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York NY 10128
Hours:
Saturday - Wednesday 11:00 am - 5:45 pm
Thursday 11:00 am - 8:00 pm
Friday Closed

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