[MSN] Max Stern

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

German auction house to proceed  with sale of Nazi-tainted art despite 
objections 
MONTREAL,  CANADA/  Thursday, November 16,  2006-- On Friday November 17th at 
10 a.m. (German local time) the Van  Ham auction house in Cologne, Germany 
has announced that it will proceed with  the sale on behalf of a German client 
of two Old Master paintings  sold under duress in 1937 by the late  Jewish art 
dealer Dr. Max Stern. The works in question are titled Market Scene in the 
Piazza Navona, Rome (1691) and Market Scene in the Piazza del Quirinale,  Rome 
(1698)  by the Dutch Baroque painter Mathijs Naiveu (1647-1721). 
This  sale will proceed despite official requests to Van Ham on behalf of the 
Stern  Estate beneficiaries (Concordia and McGill universities in Montreal, 
Canada and Hebrew University in Jerusalem) by the New York State Banking  
Department’s Holocaust Claims Processing Office (HCPO). “This blatant refusal to  
acknowledge the forced sale that took place during the Nazi era is especially  
distressing because it comes on the heels of the Estate’s first recovery 
through  Sotheby’s last month of a major work by Emile Lecomte-Vernet (1821-1900)”
 said  Concordia  University’s Dr. Clarence  Epstein who heads up the Max 
Stern Art Restitution  Project. 
On  November 8th, 2006, the HCPO requested the immediate withdrawal of  the 
Naiveu paintings from the upcoming Van Ham auction. The Van Ham sale first  
came to the attention of the HCPO through the efforts of the Art Loss Register –  
the world’s largest private international database of lost and stolen art. 
There  are presently more than 250 Stern works listed on this  database. 
The Stern Estate has been  pursuing the Naiveu paintings for several years, 
beginning when the German  possessor of the works tried to sell them through 
Sotheby’s in Amsterdam. After the  refusal by Sotheby’s to offer them due to 
the Estate’s position, the possessor  then asked the Cologne auction house, Van 
Ham, to undertake  the sale. The Estate is most disturbed by the fact that Van 
Ham has accepted to  offer these works without providing any provenance 
information whatsoever, in  particular without noting the Stern restitution claim 
attached to them. Van Ham  is well aware of the tainted history of these 
paintings. 
Dr. Max Stern (1904-1987) was  born in Germany, studied art  in Cologne, 
Berlin, Vienna and  Paris before  returning to Düsseldorf to direct the Galerie 
Stern - which was founded by his  father, Julius, in 1913. Under Nazi coercion 
he was forced to liquidate his  gallery for a fraction of its true value and 
ultimately fled Germany in 1937  with just a suitcase in hand. In 1941 he moved 
to Canada and the following year joined one of  Canada’s most successful art 
houses,  the Dominion Gallery of Fine Arts.  He eventually became its sole 
owner.  
It  was just over two years ago that Concordia University launched the Max 
Stern Art  Restitution Project. Since that time, the Project’s international 
research team  learned that at least forty Old Master and Northern European works 
owned by  Stern had been re-offered on the art market in the last two decades 
- most  of them at major auction houses in Germany.  
_http://auktion392.com/_ (http://auktion392.com/)  
_http://maxsternproject.concordia.ca/_ (http://maxsternproject.concordia.ca/) 
 

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Source:
Tanya Churchmuch 
Senior  Media Relations Advisor 
Concordia  University 
514.518.3336 
tanya.churchmuch at concordia.ca