Jessa Crispin’s reviews Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice by Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow, and The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family’s Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
When it comes to art, “private” and “public” take on confused, tangled meanings. In Lost Lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice, Melissa Müller and Monika Tatzkow show the extent to which European museums profited from the chaos following World War II. But there is one particular case — the story of Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” or “Dame in Gold” and the journey it took following the devastation of the war — that highlights these tricky issues of property. (…more at The Smart Set website…)