Today a few quotes that really speak to me:
Heritage is not just about sticks and stones. It’s about things making sense to people, part of the accumulated culture of their communities.
– John Yates (English Heritage’s Inspector for historic buildings in the West Midlands)
Art restitution is a painful exercise for everyone involved and required creative thinking by all parties and a willingness to craft solutions that at first glance may appear highly unusual.
– Monica S. Dugot (Currently the Senior Vice President/International Director of Restitution at Christie’s. Previously the Deputy Director of New York State Banking Department Holocaust Claims Processing Office)
To me my works of art are all vividly alive. They’re the embodiment of whoever created them — a mirror of their creator’s hopes, dreams and, yes, frustrations too. They’ve led eventful lives – pamepered by aristocracy and pillaged by revolution, courted with ardour and cold-blodedly abandoned. They’ve been honoured by drawing-rooms and humbled by attics. So many worlds in their life-span, yet all were transitory! What stories theycould tell, what sights they must have seen! Their worlds have long since disintegrated, yet they live on – and for the most part as beautiful as ever. Symbolic, surely?
– J. Paul Getty in Collector’s Choice, originally published in 1956, p 173 (The founder of Getty Oil was an avid art and antiquities collector. His collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles)
This piece is one of the 17 works that the Jewish Historical Institute emailed me several weeks ago. It is one of 52 of my great-grandfather’s works in their possession.
