Museum Arnhem

Investigation results

This museum has 6 objects with a potentially problematic provenance.

Result of this investigation

Investigators checked the two collections of Arnhem Museum of Modern Art and Arnhem Historical Museum Arnhem combined in Arnhem Museum and report the presence of several objects with potentially problematic provenance among those acquired between 1948 and 1954. Various items were identified in the registration system and inventory cards and investigated further in the object provenance records and annual reports. The paintings were checked at RKD. Investigators were not able to complete the provenance of all these objects so that some may turn out to have problematic provenance, although there is nothing to indicate this.

Certain objects with possibly problematic provenance were checked by Museums Association investigators. A still life was obtained by Sammelverwaltung Feindlicher Hausgeräte during the war after its Jewish owner fled the country. The archives show that the work was restored to its owner after the war, and the latter subsequently gave it to the museum.

The museum acquired five works from SNK and NBI (Netherlands Property Custodian) which are possibly problematic. The museum bought one object in 1942. Investigators examined NBI and SNK records but failed to identify the original owners. The works are:

• Hendrik Coster, Portrait of Helena Leideckers, sold to the museum by a garage owner in Apeldoorn in 1942, who stated that a customer had left it as surety some fifteen years previously.
• Willem Roelofs, Eifel Landscape with Mountain Lake, acquired from SNK in 1948, although no further information was found in the SNK records.
• Simon Maris, Portrait of a Woman in White (1905), acquired from SNK in 1949, with no information about who owned the work before it passed to SNK.
• Isaac Israels, Children on the Beach, acquired from SNK in 1948, with no information about who owned the work before it passed to SNK
• a decorated longcase clock by Koenraad Hecke, acquired from SNK in 1954, with no information about who owned it before SNK acquired it; a römer with heraldic emblems (c. 1623), acquired from NBI in 1949, with no information about who owned it before it passed to NBI.

Update

On 20 July 2016 the Restitutions Committee advised the Minister of Education, Culture and Science to reject a claim to the painting Isaac Israels 's Children on the beach. The minister rejected the claim. Read more about this at http://www.restitutiecommissie.nl/en/recommendations/recommendation_rc_1149.html

About this museum and its collection

Arnhem Municipal Museums, a combination of Arnhem Museum of Modern Art (MMKA) and Arnhem Historical Museum (HMA), became the independent Arnhem Museums foundation on 1 January 2014, fusing MMKA and HMA to form Arnhem Museum. A key theme in the museum’s collection is Magic Realism and contemporaneous art. The museum also has a major collection of modern and contemporary jewellery and applied art, as well as paintings, (gilt) silver, Asian porcelain, Arnhem pottery, furniture and objects relating to the city’s history.