Provenance: Can You Bank on It?

The biggest art deal of the Nazi era occurred in August 1935 when the Prussian Finance Minister paid the enormous amount of 7.5 million German marks to the Dresdner Bank to acquire 4,401 works of art for the Berlin museums. This momentous historical event is hardly known; Lynn Rother is one of the few scholars to research this extraordinary transaction and analyze its consequences. Using the sale of the Flemish old master paintings from the former collection of the Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as a case study, her lecture will examine the methodology, sources, and challenges of Nazi-era provenance research as it relates to art as collateral and the hidden aspects of the art market.