March 30, 2006
Concordia University in Montreal has intensified efforts to recover art looted by the Nazis. The University, one of three educational institutions that inherited the holdings of the late European art collector Max Stern, is intensifying efforts to recover all of Stern’s art stolen by the Nazis. Stern ran an art gallery in Düsseldorf (Germany) in the 1930s, but his shop was closed and the artifacts seized by the Nazis. He survived the Holocaust and went to Canada after the war.
In 1947, Stern and his wife become the owners of the Dominion Gallery in Montreal, which they ran until his death in 1987. Concordia, McGill University and Hebrew University were three of the beneficiaries of Stern’s estate, but more than 400 of works of art that had belonged to Stern were stolen by the Nazis. A year ago, Concordia committed to recovering the art works on behalf of the other executors and university beneficiaries.
So far, the Max Stern Art Restitution Project, in conjunction with the New York-based Holocaust Claims Processing Office, has located more than 40 works in public and private hands and is working toward their recovery. Most of the works were offered on the market in the past two decades, and most by the same 15 auction houses in Germany. Over the next several weeks, the claims office plans to approach the auction houses and ask for their help in contacting the last known owners of these works.
