Héctor Feliciano
Hector Feliciano | |
---|---|
American | |
Notable works | "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art." |
Hector Feliciano (born 1952) is a
Early years
Feliciano was born in
Feliciano moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, and attended Brandeis University, earning in 1974 his bachelor's degree in History and Art History. Feliciano earned his master's degree in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He then went to Paris and earned a doctorate in literature at the University of Paris while working for the city of Paris cultural affairs bureau.[1]
He began his career as a cultural writer for the Paris bureau of the
Nazi art looting
During the
The Lost Museum
Informed by the original research of Lynn H. Nicholas, author of the ground-breaking book, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and World War II, Feliciano did additional research on the issue for his book in 1989, using – in addition to Nicholas' work – material from German looting inventories, documents that had been declassified and more than 200 interviews with art dealers, art historians and the surviving relatives of the families who were victimized. At first, Feliciano believed that the families involved would be hesitant to cooperate in his investigation, however the five families whose stories would be the core of the book, the Rothschilds, the Rosenbergs, the Bernheim-Jeunes, the David-Weills and the Schlosses trusted him with their records and their memories and other families welcomed him.[1]
The French government ministries and museums refused to let Feliciano see their records and kept stalling until he was finally permitted to gain access through information requests lodged by the victims' families. Feliciano also had the help of someone from the Ministry of Culture who secretly provided him with documents sent from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Justice which proved that the French museums mingled looted works with their collections.[1] Feliciano had befriended a 92-year-old art dealer by the name of Alfred Daber who remembered all the wartime gossip in regard to the dealings that went on with the looted art. During his investigations Feliciano went to Washington, D.C. to work in the United States National Archives and discovered that Daber himself had been dealing in looted art.[1]
In 1997, Feliciano published his book: The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art. Feliciano tried to publish his book in the United States and was turned down by at least 30 publishers. He then went to a publishing house in France, where it was picked up almost immediately.[3] In his book he traces the art works looted as they passed through the hands of top German officials, unscrupulous art dealers, and unwitting auction houses such as Christie's and Sotheby's.[4] He also revealed that the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris was amongst the institutions in France and Switzerland that held works that had been seized from Jewish victims during the war by the Germans (these works are now referred to as Musées Nationaux Récupération or MNRs).[1]
Feliciano exposed the code utilized by the museum to keep track of the provenance of the works in the collection: "R" referred for "recuperation" and the number following it signified the order in which the work arrived at the museum. Feliciano charged the museum's curators with having "made no huge effort" to find the rightful owners for "thousands of unclaimed works".[5]
The book, which was first published in French, has since been translated into several other languages, including in Russian.[6] After the book's successful European publication HarperCollins, a U.S. publishing house that had initially turned it down (amongst 30 others), bought the U.S. publication rights.[3] The book points out also the role of Switzerland, whose legislation is very favourable to dishonest dealers and Russia, which categorically refuses to give back the stolen works of art found in Germany at the end of WW2 to their legitimate owners.[1]
Aftermath
The
Families whose art collections were plundered by the Nazis are reclaiming prized paintings that have been found hanging in museums around the world. Auction houses have also stopped sales of works because their postwar sellers may have been thieves.[8]
Neither Switzerland or Russia did anything in favour of the legitimate owners or their heirs.
Litigation
In 1999, a French court rejected a claim for $1 million in damages brought by the Wildenstein family against Feliciano, who suggested in his book that the French-Jewish family did business with Nazi officials during Germany's wartime occupation of France.[9] In the book Feliciano claims that the powerful dealer and collector did business with Nazi art dealers before the war and for months after France's occupation by Germany in June 1940. He also said that after Wildenstein went into exile in New York in January 1941, he maintained contacts with a former employee, Roger Duquoy, who ran the Paris gallery until 1944. The three-judge lower court stated the following in reaching their decision:[9]
The Lost Museum: the Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art, as well as new documents presented to the court, the judges said that "Hector Feliciano had in his hands elements that permitted him to believe that Georges Wildenstein maintained direct and indirect relations with German authorities during the occupation."
The family of the Parisian art dealer Paul Rosenberg recovered paintings by Matisse,
Later years
During the 1998–99 academic year, as part of the National Arts Journalism Program, Feliciano was one of fourteen journalists selected for a Journalism Fellowship by Columbia University, in which he specialized in arts and culture.[11] He continued to live in Paris and was the editor in chief of World Media Network, a newspaper syndicate serving 23 European newspapers.[1] Feliciano worked as the director of the Ministry of Culture and the "Club des Poètes" in Paris before moving to New York City where he writes for El Pais and Clarin.[1]
Feliciano is a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at
See also
- List of Puerto Rican writers
- List of Puerto Ricans
- Puerto Rican literature
- Nazi plunder
- Looted art
- Musées nationaux récupération
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "A Bulldog on the Heels of Lost Nazi Loot"; New York Times; November 4, 1997; By JUDITH H. DOBRZYNSKI
- ^ "Looted Art Recovery". Archived from the original on 2008-11-20. Retrieved 2020-01-19.
- ^ a b c "Freshman Honors Seminars: Fall 2005". Archived from the original on 2007-03-20. Retrieved 2008-08-10.
- ^ Museum Security
- ISBN 978-0-465-04194-7
- ^ "Мрачная сторона искусства".
- ^ Albert Gleizes painting looted by Nazis
- ^ "Heirs pursue 'lost museum' stolen by Nazis". CNN. 1997-12-25. Retrieved 2008-08-11.
- ^ a b New York Times, French Court Rejects Suit By Dealer Linked to Nazis; By ALAN RIDING; Published: June 24, 1999
- ^ "Judge Dismisses Writer's Suit Over Payments for the Recovery of Paintings Stolen by the Nazis", New York Times, By TERRY PRISTIN, Published: March 10, 2003
- ^ New York Times - Four Universities Announce Recipients of Journalism Fellowships
Further reading
- The Lost Museum by Hector Feliciano. Published by Basic Books (Harper Collins Publishers), 1997, ISBN 0-465-04194-9.