Wartime Loot Gets a Too-Hasty Boot

Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held a brief “Ceremony for the Return of a Textile to a Polish Museum.” A work of art in LACMA’s collection was discovered to have been looted by the Nazis during World War II, and now restitution was being made. Shortly after 2 p.m., while the museum was closed to the public, Andrea L. Rich leaned into the microphone set up in the lobby of the museum’s Anderson Building and declared in stentorian tones to invited guests how she was “so proud” to be director of LACMA at this important moment.

Krzysztof W. Kasprzyk, consul general of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles, stepped to the podium and accepted the return of the textile on behalf of the Princes Czartoryski Foundation Museum in Krakow. He was visibly moved. The late medieval tapestry, looted from Poland by the Nazis not once but twice during World War II, was finally going home where it belonged.

In fact, as you read these words, the textile should already be in transit to Krakow.

The legal, moral and ethical issues around Nazi looting have grown exponentially in importance since the end of the Cold War. Finally, they have come home to roost at LACMA, in the first instance of a work of art in its collection that can definitively be shown to have been war booty. The museum, after a year of diligent research, is convinced of the authenticity of the Polish museum’s claim on the work, has made the necessary legal and diplomatic arrangements for the return of the textile and is sending it on its way.

I’ve got just one question: What is the bloody rush? Wednesday’s announcement was the museum’s first public airing of a high-profile situation of critical importance to its constituency, and 48 hours later the textile is gone from L.A.?

No provisions were made for the tapestry, which has been rolled up in museum storage for 20 years, to be shown to the people of Los Angeles County. We have owned this work of art for more than three decades, when our museum acquired it for us in good faith from a local dealer. Our public museum bought it, cared for it and paid for comprehensive research on its tormented history of past ownership. So why aren’t we owed an opportunity to see it before it gets sent 7,000 miles away to Eastern Europe?

Certainly it’s correct that the textile should be returned to its rightful owner. No credible argument can be made for keeping stolen art. But what’s up with the bum’s rush? You’d think the Czartoryski textile was radioactive--that it needed to be shipped to the Yucca Mountain of Krakow right now, before Angelenos start to glow in the dark.

Several years ago, when the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., discovered that a Florentine Mannerist painting in its collection had been looted from the Italian embassy in Berlin during the war’s chaotic final days, the museum’s director made arrangements for its return to Italy. He also took the opportunity to organize a loan exhibition that was built around compatible works in the Wadsworth’s collection and in the Roman museum where the stolen painting was being returned. The looted canvas, a biblical scene by the minor painter Jacopo Zucchi (1541-1590), wasn’t part of that 1998 exhibition; but it hung at the entrance during the run of the show, with a full explanation of the thorny problem of Nazi loot. The Hartford public benefited mightily from an otherwise difficult and unhappy situation.

LACMA didn’t offer its public any such thing. The board of trustees voted to return the textile at a meeting Feb. 6, and then the museum sat on the announcement for four weeks. The textile remained rolled up in storage, when at least it could have spent the month on public display.

The textile in question is a late-medieval Persian or Mughal ceremonial canopy, reportedly 7 feet wide and 9 feet long, whose silk and metallic weaving features the depiction of an ancient prince surrounded by angels, birds, animals and figures bearing gifts. Now, I’m no scholar of 15th century textiles, Persian, Mughal or otherwise. But if you happen to be--or even if you’re just curious about a work that is so treasured by its rightful owners--you’re out of luck. Unless you happened to catch the Czartoryski textile during its last public appearance at LACMA in 1983--well, there’s always Krakow in your future.

At Wednesday’s ceremony, where the sanctimony was so thick you could cut it with a knife, the textile was laid out on a table rolled up in acid-free storage paper next to the podium, with just a small portion visible. It looked pleasant, if not compelling. Indeed, the museum says it’s a study piece, not a major work of art, which had been damaged and extensively repaired when LACMA bought it for a few thousand dollars in 1971.

Still, the intrinsic quality of the piece is wholly beside the point. Jacopo Zucchi wasn’t exactly the toast of 16th century Florence, either.

The museum claims the tapestry can’t be publicly displayed in its current condition because it’s “too fragile”--and certainly the small section that was on view was not in pristine condition. But, frankly, conservation status is a flimsy excuse. Unrolling the textile for a few weeks of public display cannot reasonably be claimed to be a curatorial impossibility--especially given the gravity of the international issue of Nazi loot and the opportunity for public enlightenment. It could even have been just partly unrolled, as it was at Wednesday’s private ceremony.

We should be thankful that the museum has apparently handled the administrative aspects of the repatriation with diligence. Yet, we should be just as concerned that it has bungled the artistic component of its public charge. For in shutting out its audience, LACMA has created an untenable Hobson’s choice: The art public is left to wonder whether the museum doesn’t know any better, or whether it has something to hide. Neither explanation offers much consolation.