The Dutch government said it will return two Nazi-looted paintings to the heirs of a Jewish Holocaust victim. The 17th-century paintings — “Amsterdam Town Hall” by Gerrit Berckheyde and “View of a Dutch Harbour with Figures” by Adam Willaerts — belonged to the Dutch Jewish collector Sam Bernhard Levie, the Advisory Committee on the Assessment…
George Clooney’s new film, “The Monuments Men,” is based on the real-life story of a team of scholars and artists who threw on some fatigues and dashed off to Europe during World War II to save imperiled art. Their mission is very explicitly framed as a heroic struggle to save Western Culture (with that capital…
Actors George Clooney, Matt Damon and Bill Murray will attend a screening of their new movie “The Monuments Men” at the White House on Tuesday night hosted by President Barack Obama. The film, directed by Clooney, is based on the true story of U.S. soldiers in World War Two who rescued art masterpieces from Nazi…
A painting by an 18th-century German artist, one of tens of thousands of Polish art objects looted by the Nazis and missing for 75 years, was returned to Poland by U.S. officials on Thursday. In an emotional ceremony in New York, Poland’s U.S. Ambassador Ryszard Schnepf thanked the officials as he accepted the painting by…
For the most ambitious of his five films as director, George Clooney assembled a top-shelf cast of fellow actors to play art experts tasked with retrieving artistic treasure stolen by the Germans during World War Two. There is one person, though, who is not a Hollywood A-lister, not listed in the credits and who may…
There is hardly a white spot visible on Harry Ettlinger’s calendar. As we tour the 88-year-old Ettlinger’s immaculate apartment, he ignores the ringing phone; someone from Sony Pictures leaves a voicemail: “I will be emailing you today or tomorrow your confirmation number for your limousine pickup.” He pulls press clippings and pictures out of folders,…
George Clooney may never have worked in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, a Jewish academic organization dedicated to studying and preserving the culture of east European Jewry, but his new film, Monuments Men, portrays a group of soldiers who was very much responsible for saving and securing a significant portion of…
Paintings looted by the Nazis during World War Two and retrieved by the Monuments Men, the Allied group tasked with returning masterpieces to their rightful owners, will be sold at auction on Thursday in New York. The works, which will go under the hammer during Sotheby’s sale of Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture, were…
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