A group dedicated to finishing the work of World War II monuments is betting on Trump’s deck to help find the missing works of art taken by the Nazis-and money. I will reward you-.
Inspired by the history of the U.S. military that created the mission-related playing cards, the Dallas-based Monumentmen Foundation announced on Wednesday the creation of a deck focused on paintings, sculptures, reliquaries and other works. .. Existence.
“What we need to do is raise awareness of what is missing,” said Foundation President Anna Bottinelli. She says, “You may know a friend who has a beautiful painting on the wall, and you don’t even doubt that the painting belongs to someone else.”
The group offers up to $ 25,000 in rewards for information that leads to the recovery of each cultural object in the deck, and features several cards each week on social media.
According to Bottinelli, the Foundation worked with museums, law enforcement agencies, and owners of lost art to narrow down works such as Vincent van Gogh, Caravaggio, and Claude Monet.
One is the Edgar Degas pastel, entitled “Portrait of Gabrieldio”, brought by the Nazis from a French home in 1940, known to have been sold to unknown Swiss collectors in the mid-1970s. ..
“Many of these have recently resurfaced at auction by 2008,” Botinelli said.
Sold through the Foundation and the National Museum of World War II in New Orleans, this deck features the most desired fugitives of the Iraq War and was designed to help soldiers identify aircraft. I’m in favor of US military traditions, including World War II decks. Bottinelli said.
FBI special agent Christopher McKee, a member of the New York-based art crime team, believes there is a misconception that most of the lost art has been found nearly 80 years after the end of the war. Said that.
“There’s still a lot of artwork to watch,” McKee said, saying the Nazi looting was “on a really hard-to-understand scale.”
According to McKio, people may not be aware of the artwork’s past until they bring it to a gallery or auction house.
“In such cases, we will grab it and hopefully take steps to repatriate the artwork,” McKee said, and when such history becomes clear, “owners usually do it. I am very pleased to return. “
“The atrocities of war are irreversible, but the little things you can do to reunite one of these works with your heirs are important,” McKee said.
Robert Edsel, founder and chairman of the Monumentmen Foundation, said to anyone who realized they owned the looted art, “This is a chance for people to do the right thing, go forward and tackle the problem. That’s it. “
Edsel founded the Foundation in 2007 to honor Monumentmen, a group of men and women in the Allies. Many had artistic expertise, helping to protect cultural properties during the war during World War II and to return works of art plundered by the Nazis after the war. To a legitimate owner.
He has written several books on Monument Men, including one based on the movie “Monument Men” starring and directed by George Clooney.
The Foundation has been frequently called by people wondering about the objects of the war, and for over 30 years, including a 16th-century tapestry taken by US officers from Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest Retreat near the end of the war. I have supported the return. The family of officers presented a tapestry to a German museum in 2016.
In addition to the 52 works of art on the deck, each of the two cards (jokers) contains a set of Nazi photo albums of artwork that lacks volume.
There’s a reason to expect someone to come across one: The Foundation has already found five that were brought back as souvenirs by US soldiers after the war.
“It was always a pleasure for us to see how grateful we were for both the party that returned something and the party that we received,” Botinelli said.
