Bomann-Museum Celle: Special exhibition on provenance research extended

The spe­cial ex­hi­bi­tion “Suche nach Herkun­ft – NS-Raubkun­st im Bo­mann-Mu­se­um?!” (Search­ing for ori­gins—Nazi-loot­ed art in the Bo­mann Mu­se­um?!) at the Bo­mann-Mu­se­um Celle has been ex­tend­ed and can now be viewed un­til Septem­ber 13, 2020. It presents se­lect­ed find­ings from three years of prove­nance re­search, which has been fund­ed by the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg.

The ex­hi­bi­tion pro­vides in­sights in­to ob­jects for­mer­ly owned by lo­cal Jew­ish cit­i­zens which were ac­quired by the mu­se­um af­ter 1933. It al­so sheds light on ac­qui­si­tions from art deal­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly Hans W. Lange in Berlin. To date, a num­ber of ob­jects have been iden­ti­fied which were ex­pro­pri­at­ed dur­ing the sys­tem­at­ic loot­ing of art­works by the Nazis in Eu­rope, in­clud­ing in the Nether­lands and France. Two paint­ings ac­quired in 1943 pre­vi­ous­ly be­longed to the col­lec­tion of Hitler’s of­fi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher, Hein­rich Hoff­mann. These, oth­er cas­es, and the re­search paths can all be viewed in the ex­hi­bi­tion.

At the be­gin­ning of March 2020, a new ex­hi­bi­tion sec­tion on tex­tile ac­qui­si­tions was added, but could on­ly be dis­played for a few days be­fore the mu­se­um had to be closed tem­porar­i­ly due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. The mu­se­um and the ex­hi­bi­tion re­opened on May 7.

In 2016, the mu­se­um be­gan to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ex­am­ine the ad­di­tions to its col­lec­tions that were made be­tween 1933 and 1945.

In­for­ma­tion about the ex­hi­bi­tion „Suche nach Herkun­ft – NS-Raubkun­st im Bo­mann-Mu­se­um?!“ (on­ly Ger­man ver­sion)

Project de­scrip­tion