Nazi-looted art returning to its rightful owners

Eighty years ago, Ardelia Hall found herself, through luck and hard work, the fine arts and monuments adviser at the U.S. Department of State.

It was there that she helped — for almost 20 years after World War II — to return stolen European paintings to their rightful owners. By the end of her career in 1964, the department had helped to return 4,000 pieces of art to 14 countries.

To this day, the State Department continues the late Hall’s art-restitution work. “One of the things that we’re working on right now is encouraging countries to endorse what are called the ‘best practices’ of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, basically principles that museums, galleries, governments can use to try and do the right thing in identifying works of art, doing provenance research, finding out their history,” says Ellen Germain, U.S. special envoy for Holocaust issues.

Ardelia Hall never saw her life’s work entailing the return of stolen European paintings to their rightful owners. Hall — who had a master’s degree in Chinese language and history from Columbia University and worked for many years as a curatorial assistant in the Art of Asia Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — found herself, through luck and hard work, the fine arts and monuments adviser to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs for almost 20 years.

By the end of her career in 1964, the State Department, under Hall’s leadership, had helped to return over 4,000 pieces of art to 14 countries. “Ardelia Hall is a very interesting character because for all the work that the Monuments Men did, the Monuments Man that served longest was a woman: Ardelia Hall,” says historian Robert Edsel, author of The Monuments Men, about the American effort to save and return art during World War II that was looted by the Nazis.

Of note, Hall helped to return a rare copy of the Mainz Psalter — one of ten known to exist, and part of the second printed series of books (after the Gutenberg Bible) — to the State Library of Saxony in Dresden, a portrait of Saint Catherine by Peter Paul Rubens to the Dusseldorf Museum, and a Monet landscape painting to the Rothschild family.

At the end of World War II, the Allies had identified some 700,000 pieces of art and 3 million books that had been looted by the Nazis from primarily Jewish families and art museums around the continent.