A Historical and Cultural View of Many Lives of Looting: A Conservation with Philippe de Montebello

November 27, 2023

Image source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/loot?ref=etymonline_crossreference#etymonline_v_52012

By Barbie Kim

Philippe de Montebello is the Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Author of multiple essays and books, including Rendez-vous with Art and Whose Muse?: Art Museums and the Public Trust, de Montebello was the longest-tenured director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he served for 32 years (1977-2008).

The article below is derived from a conversation with Professor de Montebello, based on his lectures at the Institute of Fine Arts, entitled History and Meaning of Museums. Combined with insights from Professor de Montebello, the following reviews the prominent historical and current association of “loot.” Professor de Montebello seems to warn against dogmatic approach to returning objects. This article focuses on “looting” behavior during the Roman empire, Napoleon’s sovereignty, and the Nazi regime. The comparative overview demystifies the adverse and one-dimensional understanding of “loot.” Ultimately, this history demonstrates that handling displaced cultural properties is difficult to have uniform treatment (until now).

Introduction

“Looting” is a term linked with different events, ranging from invasions that served the empire’s political agenda to market-driven theft from archeological sites and illicit traffic of art and antiquities. Although the term “loot” did not come to use in the anglo language until the eighteenth century, historians have traced the proto-behavior of looting back to the dawn of humanity.^[1] For example, the Roman conquerors took Greek art as spoils of war, as seen on the Arch of Titus. In the same vein, Napoleonic looting of art aimed to enrich the Louvre’s collection while Nazi Germany’s organized and systematic plunder of art during World War II continues to haunt the museum world.

Today, “looting” is associated with scandal headlines about major museums and elite trustees. The concern about the displacement of cultural property is central in cultural institutions. Cultural institutions are responsible for enriching cultural discourse while being mindful of the problematic past when approaching looted objects. Rising controversy places pressure on cultural institutions to re-examine their collections, as possessing and displaying looted objects has led to both ethical condemnation and legal battles.^[2]

In the heat of debates searching for a solution, upon request, Professor Philip de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shared his view on looting through a cultural and institutional lens.

Looting: A historical perspective

“Looting itself is a loaded term, and looting has different meanings at different times. Looting in ancient times was an established and partially legal method of compensating one’s army and establishing one’s dominance over the city and stage one conqueror. When speaking of roman loot, of course, it is not a statute of law. However, one is speaking from an accepted form of behavior as a result of battle and conquest,” Professor de Montebello explains.^[3] “Looting in ancient times was considered an acceptable form of collection. But ancient authors already sensed the magnitude of the looting was so great, and they were concerned it was a cultural genocide.”^[4]

The social role of looting can be seen throughout history. Despite exposé-like media coverage about cultural institutions’ tangled involvement with looted objects, looting was not always a tale of great secrecy and condemnation. Displaying a “looted object” was a public triumph, as the Roman Antecedents set models of displaying spoils to demonstrate powers and establish cultural authority. After the victory in the battle of Pydna (167 BC), the Roman general Lucius Aemilius Paullus took three days to parade through Rome the procession of the booty captured from the Macedonian King Perseus.^[5] For Romans, plundering an enemy defeated in the war was an organized regulation and ritual disposition in the city.^[6]

Ancient Roman beliefs and behaviors continue to resurface in the river of time. The Roman empire continues to be a symbolic reference to greatness and power. Their proto-looting behavior during the ancient time translates to triumph.

Many succeeding conquerors drew historical references to the Roman empire and justified looking to reclaim or establish dominance. Napoleon aspired to the victory of Lucius Mummius.^[7] The looting behaviors thus marked Napoleon’s government as the heritage of the greatest culture from the ancient world. The best way to show this symbolic political statement is to loot the antiquities from others and display their reclaimed heritage. With the same nationalist sentiment, Napoleon built Arc de Triomphe, inspired by the triumphal arch of antiquity.

“In the case of Napoleon,” de Montebello says, “it was an organized and carefully orchestrated reward of conquest. Every item looted was not randomly ransacked by Napoleon’s troops. Napoleon wrote out a list with the help of French curators and art historians [at the time], a list of works of art from every city that he conquered to bring back to the Louvre museum to turn Louvre into the greatest museum of the world and France as the center of arts.”^[8]

He continues, “There was a treaty with each city, such as Vienna, with a list of specific works they should send. So this was different from the troop of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, looting during the 16th century. However, Napoleon’s action was still a result of conquest, taking all of the masterpieces to form the conquered areas and bringing them back to the Louvre.”^[9]

To Napoleon, Roman triumphs signified the establishment of an empire. Thus showing his government’s potential for “powerful spectacle and symbolism.”^[10] Paris will become the new Rome, centering Napoleon’s empire both culturally and politically. Historian Margaret Miles documented that Napoleon displayed the captured statues, paintings, natural history collections, scientific instruments, tapestries, plants and animals, and even archival documents that Napoleon had plundered from principalities in Italy and from the Pope’s collection.^[11] “Loot” was more a nationalist political strategy than criminally associated behavior. However, Napoleon’s triumphant act still faces disapproval.

Restitution: A historical perspective

Subsequent to the overwhelming scale of looting behavior seen during Napoleon’s rule, Humanists fronted upon the ideology, and their thoughts formulated the foundation of modern resolutions conceptualized during the eighteenth century. French archeologist Quatremère de Quincy argued against reviving the traditional Roman right of conquest, which was abandoned by the eighteenth-century law of war.^[12] Quatremère declared, “in civilized Europe, that which belongs to the arts and sciences is beyond the rights of war and victory.”^[13] His statement was considered an early prefiguration of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

After defeating Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, the Duke of Wellington– the lead British diplomat in Paris – claimed restitutions for the allied powers of Austria, Spain, the Low Countries, the German states, the Italian states, and the Vatican.^[14] The second Treaty of Paris, signed on November 20, 1815, obliged France to return the plundered artifacts to their former sovereigns.^[15] The historical effort on restitution largely affected the current view on handling displaced cultural properties.

Dr. Yue Zhang, a professor at Southeast University, China, exemplifies Wellington’s ground and reflects that modern warfare’s concept of justice and practice “restricted the traditional right of conquest and prohibited the wartime plunder of cultural artifacts.”^[16] According to Zhang, many scholars consider restitution on ethical or political grounds, “such as redressing historical wrongs, consolidating national identities, or carrying out the necessary steps of decolonization.”^[17] To consider restitution under human rights law, “returning significant cultural artifacts preserve the identity of peoples and communities.”^[18] Meanwhile, critics argue against ethics-driven restitution as having “weak connections to modern states’ culture or having merely political or moral sentiment without a legal basis.”^[19]

Zhang adds that restitution also falls in the debates about cultural property internationalism and cultural property nationalism. Zhang questions whether the role of cultural property should be considered a “common heritage belonging to all peoples or a national heritage only belonging to certain countries.”^[20] Many museums face the pressure of returning their collection to their “origin” country. This resolution disregards the changing national concept over the long history. For cultural scholars, a definitive concept of “origin” for return is difficult to locate. Professor de Montebello cautioned, “the way people talk about looting and repatriation is modern to contemporary, twentieth, and twentieth-first-century views on national patrimony. It is problematic because it presumes that anything should return to its origin. Anything Rome to return to Rome, anything Greek should return to Greece, and so forth. If you take it to the letter, it means that the encyclopedic art museum should close all its galleries.”^[21]

The lack of contextualization leaves museums acting according to the dogmatic structure and ethical pressure. Cultural institutions are often expected to apply a generalized ethical resolution to cultural property displacement. The dogmatic structure affects the institution’s policy and the display of cultural objects at a dichotomy. “People who are now dogmatic do not take into consideration the circumstance under which work travels.” Professor de Montebello perceived an urgency to understand the multiplicity of the terminologies and use them to represent and educate the history of looting. “At what point do you reward illegitimate enlightenment quest for knowledge and enrichment of collection so you can display? Of course, there is a colonist point of view one cannot deny, but it’s not all black and white.”^[22]

Underlining context, Professor de Montebello distinguishes war-time looting from cultural exchange. He comments on the weight of war crime during the twentieth to twenty-first centuries, “Looting during wartime is very different from cultural exchange. Generally, wartime is about the property and not culture. And it needs to be distinguished. It has been addressed by the Hague Convention. We all recognize it during wartime is not a normal form of collecting. You do not have the clarity of purchasing, with the Nazi looting of World War II with forced sales and so forth.”^[23]

Overlapping Napoleon’s motivation, Hitler wanted to enrich the Third Reich and its leaders with exquisite and culturally significant works.^[24] At the same time, Hitler also aimed to create the Führermuseum as the cultural center of the world in his hometown Linz, Austria.^[25] The displacement of cultural property during the Nazi era takes multiple forms beyond its general reference. Nazi looting is lucidly referred to in art historical discourses. The Nazis purged modern artworks from German museums and opened the traveling “Degenerate Art Exhibition,” (German: Die Ausstellung “Entartete Kunst), ” during the latter part of 1937.^[26] Meanwhile, many dealers and collectors were coerced into unjust transactions. The Nazis attacked private Jewish collections, public museums, and organizations that were at odds with Nazi ideology.^[27]

Over several decades, Nazi-era restitution had become one of the central intersections between legal and cultural discourse. Emphasizing the individuality of Nazi plunder cases, Professor de Montebello explains, “there are so many different forms of different cases. It [Nazi Plunder] is very different from the general collecting during the mass modernist period. This was a particular act of looting and retaliation on the battlefield.”

Understanding the shifting social role of looting allows a dynamic approach to restitution based on context. Professor de Montebello stressed that “Nazi Germany is a particular case; it is not a personal poetry rule, taken from individuals, many of whom were ultimately killed. So this was theft. It is not cultural. Many of the works owned by the Jews were not Judaica, they were French impressionist paintings, old masters, and medieval works. They were the property of Jews, a totally different case.” ^[28] As De Montebello explains, the majority of Nazi plunder cases are centralized to theft and property disputes.

Legal scholar Jennifer Anglim Kreder raises issues particular to theft victims filing lawsuits to recover cultural property taken during war and revolution. Kreder examines the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the Act of State Doctrine applied to cases seeking to recover art stolen during the Nazi era. According to Kreder, the U.S displays a dogmatic common-law mantra preventing getting titles from a thief.^[29] Especially in New York, “doctrines such as the demand and refusal rule were designed to favor the theft victims to prevent the world’s premiere art market from corruption.”^[30] The dogmatic approach to theft puts many cultural institutions’ collections under a microscope. Under such pressure, major cultural institutions in the U.S., such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and The Smithsonian Institution, have all issued statements about their provenance research policies. The institutions dedicated their efforts to researching “wide spared looting by the Nazi regime” during the World War II era. The effort to research Nazi-Confiscated Art is situationally specific. The same effort is not equally applied to other historical “looting” events and leaving others to seek alternative restitution methods.

Conclusion

De Montebello cautioned, “The term looting should be abolished. There are far too many meanings from different times. The concept you have in mind when you think of the term loot will be very different from mine. It varies depending on individuals. A more precise meaning of loot should be found.”^[31] The fluid understanding of the looting shows dogmatics in the resolutions of looted objects for cultural institutions that might critically shift the narrative of cultural discourse. Looting should concern as a diachronic discourse. The overview of the historical shift of the social role of looting demonstrates the challenges cultural institutions face under the media’s spotlight. For cultural institutions, the concern extends beyond property ownership and needs to how the institution should handle the “looted objects” in their collections. Understanding the multiple functions of looting provide context and juxtaposition of information in an individual case of restitution.

About the author

Barbie Kim is an M.A. student in History of Art and Archaeology at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a class of Spring 2023 graduate intern at the Center for Art Law. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts with an Art History Thesis from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Referenced works:

“Arch of Titus | Yeshiva University.” Accessed March 25, 2023. https://www.yu.edu/cis/activities/arch-of-titus.

Fannon, Molly. “‘The Looting of Cultural Heritage Has Been Happening since the Very Existence of Cultural Heritage, It Is Not Anything New, but What We See Now Is That Looting Has Become Highly Organized.’” WCO News (blog). Accessed February 8, 2023. https://mag.wcoomd.org/magazine/wco-news-81/the-looting-of-cultural-heritage-has-been-happening-since-the-very-existence-of-cultural-heritage-it-is-not-anything-new-but-what-we-see-now-is-that-looting-has-become-highly-organized/.

Gihring, Tim. “Confronting the Legacy of Looting: From Colonialism to Nazis, Mia Is Reckoning with the Ancient Problem of Plunder.” Minneapolis Institute of Art, May 19, 2020. https://new.artsmia.org/stories/confronting-the-legacy-of-looting-from-colonialism-to-nazis-mia-is-reckoning-with-the-ancient-problem-of-plunder.

Jasanoff, Maya. “Collectors of Empire: Objects, Conquests and Imperial Self-Fashioning.” Past & Present, no. 184 (2004): 109–35.

Kreder, Jennifer. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases.” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 49, no. 1 (January 1, 2017): 227-240.

Manacorda, Stefano. “Criminal Law Protection of Cultural Heritage: An International Perspective.” Crime in the Art and Antiquities World, 2011, 17.

Miles, Margaret M. “Still in the Aftermath of Waterloo: A Brief History of Decisions about Restitution.” In Cultural Heritage, Ethics, and the Military, edited by PETER G. STONE, 4:29–42. Boydell & Brewer, 2011.

“Spoils of War · Arch for Titus · Piranesi in Rome.” Accessed March 25, 2023. http://omeka.wellesley.edu/piranesi-rome/exhibits/show/arch-for-titus/spoils.

Thompson, Erin. Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present. Possession. Yale University Press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300221008.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Looted Art — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/looted-art.

Zhang, Yue. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 42, no. 4 (January 1, 2021): 1097.

Zimmer, By Ben. “‘Looting’: A Term With Roots in Protest and Conflict.” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2020, sec. Life. https://www.wsj.com/articles/looting-a-term-with-roots-in-protest-and-conflict-11591310530.

Additional Reading

“Art and Cultural Heritage Looting and Destruction | Art History Teaching Resources.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://arthistoryteachingresources.org/lessons/art-and-cultural-heritage-looting-and-destruction/.

Balcells, Marc. Plundering Boys: A Cultural Criminology Assessment on the Power of Cultural Heritage as a Cause for Plunder in Armed Conflicts along History. Brill, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004251427_017.

Behzadi, Emily. “‘Spain for the Spaniards’: An Examination of the Plunder & Polemic Restitution of the Salamanca Papers.” Geo. Mason Int’l L. J. 11 (January 1, 2020): 1.

Burris, Donald. “From Tragedy to Triumph in the Pursuit of Looted Art: Altmann, Benningson, Portrait of Wally, Von Saher and Their Progeny, 15 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 394 (2016).” UIC Review of Intellectual Property Law 15, no. 3 (January 1, 2016). https://repository.law.uic.edu/ripl/vol15/iss3/2.

“Confronting the Legacy of Looting: From Colonialism to Nazis, Mia Is Reckoning with the Ancient Problem of Plunder –– Minneapolis Institute of Art.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://new.artsmia.org/stories/confronting-the-legacy-of-looting-from-colonialism-to-nazis-mia-is-reckoning-with-the-ancient-problem-of-plunder.

Deshmukh, Marion, and Elizabeth Simpson. “The Spoils of War. World War II and Its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance and Recovery of Cultural Property.” German Studies Review 22, no. 2 (1999): 322.

Gardner, James. The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum. First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020.

Kreder, Jennifer Anglim. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY, October 28, 2016. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2867632.

McClellan, Andrew. Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999.

“New Research Tracks Ancient Artifacts Looted by the Nazis – The New York Times.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/arts/design/nazis-antiquities-looted.html.

“Reparations: A Legal and Moral Basis | Time.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://time.com/132034/a-legal-and-moral-basis-for-reparations/.

“Return of African Artifacts Sets a Tricky Precedent for Europe’s Museums – The New York Times.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/arts/design/macron-report-restitution-precedent.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article&region=Footer.​​

Sandholtz, Wayne. “Plunder, Restitution, and International Law.” International Journal of Cultural Property 17, no. 2 (2010): 147–76. doi:10.1017/S094073911000007X.

“The History of Power Is the History of Looting | Time.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://time.com/5851111/protests-looting/.

Thompson, Erin L. “How the Met Museum Justifies Looting.” Hyperallergic, December 22, 2021. http://hyperallergic.com/701569/how-the-met-museum-justifies-looting/.

Treue, Wilhelm. Art Plunder: The Fate of Works of Art in War, Revolution and Peace. London: Methuen, 1960.

—

Notes from the Conversation:

Q: How the meaning and attitude towards looting shifted over history? What can we learn from this shift?

PdM: “Looting itself is a loaded term, and looting has different meanings at different times. Looting at ancient times was an established and partially legal method of compensating one’s army and of establishing one’s dominance over the city and stage one conquerer. When speaking of roman loot, of course, it is not a statute of law. However, one is speaking from an accepted form of behavior As a result of battle and conquest.”

“The way people talk about looting and repatriation is modern to contemporary, 20th, and 21st-century views on national patrimony, and it’s problematic because it presumes that anything should return to its origin. Anything Rome to return to Rome, anything greek should return to Greece….If you take it to the letter, it really means that the metropolitan museum of art should close all its galleries.”

“Looting in ancient times was considered an acceptable form of collection. But ancient authors already sensed the magnitude of the looting was so great, and they were concerned it was a cultural genocide.”

“Napoleon was a completely different case and cannot be compared to what happened in the 19th and 20th centuries. Because in the case of Napoleon, it was an organized and carefully orchestrated reward of conquest, every item looted was not randomly ransacked by Napoleon’s troops. Napoleon wrote out a list with the help of French curators and art historians [at the time], a list of works of art from every city that he conquered to bring back to the Louvre museum to turn love into the greatest museum of the world, and France as the center of arts.”

“There was a treaty with each city, such as Vienna, with a list of specific works they should send. So this was different from the troop of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, looting during the 16th century. However, Napoleon’s action was still a result of conquest, taking all of the masterpieces to form the conquered areas and bringing them back to the Louvre.”

 

Do you see this model parallels or still shadows in contemporary museum practice? 

PdM: “We are here dealing with the issue of ideology, with the orthodoxy of the day, a kind of self-flattering point of view.”

“People who are now dogmatic don’t take into consideration the circumstances under which work travels.”

“At what point do you reward illegitimate enlightenment quest for knowledge and enrichment of collection so you can display, yes, there is a colonist point of view one cannot deny, but it’s not black and white.”

“Do you want to be so preventive, thinking that one culture’s art should only remain in its region, based on changing borders and geographical understanding of nationality? It is a form of colonizing and self-colonizing.”

If works of art cannot move, the art we see today would be awful. The art we see today is enriched because it comes from everywhere. Interaction between regions bordering Aesthetic Instead of healing the cultural wound, maintaining and hardening the divisions, one must not simply close the wound over time but use them as cultural enrichment. One has to overcome it.

Q: [Looting then is a result of conquest and power, often in association with catastrophic events which seems like overcoming cultural wound are not as easy]

PdM: “Nazi Germany is a particular case; it is not a personal poetry rule, taken from individuals, many of whom were ultimately killed. So this was theft. It’s not cultural. Many of the works owned by the Jews were not Judaica, and they were French impressionist paintings, old masters, and medieval works.” “They were the property of Jews, a totally different case.”

Q: So then The term looting risks merges the idea of cultural exchange and theft of property?

PdM: “The term looting should be abolished. There are far too many meanings and different times from different times. When you think of loot, in your mind, it means one concept more than yours and varies depending on individuals. A more precise meaning of loot should be found.”

Lawyers are people who have biases like any human does, its nature. However, when lawyers start to examine a case whether it is restitution, country of origin, WWII. What is the tool of the lawyer is exiting law which they cannot oblige. They must refer to a specific statute. With restitution, it becomes complicated because different countries established other laws and aments. Lawyers are compelled to put aside their options, look at the actual laws, and read the text. So it’s very different from the general intellectual, cultural, and emotional aspects of looting. I am very frustrated by what is happening today, I don’t know what to think about restitution and museums dismantling their Galleries.

Sources:

1. Ben Zimmer,. “‘Looting’: A Term With Roots in Protest and Conflict.” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2020, sec. Life. https://www.wsj.com/articles/looting-a-term-with-roots-in-protest-and-conflict-11591310530. ↑
2. “Spoils of War · Arch for Titus · Piranesi in Rome.” Accessed March 25, 2023. http://omeka.wellesley.edu/piranesi-rome/exhibits/show/arch-for-titus/spoils. ↑
3. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023 ↑
4. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023 ↑
5. Erin Thompson. Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present. Possession. Yale University Press, 2016, 29-30. ↑
6. Thompson. Possession, 29-30. ↑
7. De Montebello, Philippe. “History and Meaning of Museum.” History and Meaning of Museum, Institute of Fine Arts, James B. Duke House, November 1, 2022 ↑
8. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023 ↑
9. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023 ↑
10. Margaret M. Miles “Still in the Aftermath of Waterloo: A Brief History of Decisions about Restitution.” In Cultural Heritage, Ethics, and the Military, edited by PETER G. STONE, 4:29–42. Boydell & Brewer, 2011, 32 ↑
11. Miles “Still in the Aftermath of Waterloo: A Brief History of Decisions about Restitution.”, 32 ↑
12. Zhang, Yue. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 42, no. 4 (January 1, 2021): 1097-1156, 1128. ↑
13. De Montebello, Philippe. “History and Meaning of Museum.” History and Meaning of Museum, Institute of Fine Arts, James B. Duke House, October 25, 2022 ↑
14. Zhang. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,”1129. ↑
15. Zhang. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,”1131. ↑
16. Associate professor, Southeast University, School of Law, China; S.J.D. Dr. Yue Zhang wrote “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,” as an interpretation of customary international law-making, looking back at nineteenth century laws to pave the legal grounds for claiming looted cultural property today. ↑
17. Zhang. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,” 1104. ↑
18. Zhang. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,” 1104. ↑
19. Zhang. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,” 1104. ↑
20. Zhang. “The Right to Restitution of Cultural Property Removed as Spoils of War during Nineteenth-Century International Warfare,” 1104. ↑
21. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023 ↑
22. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023 ↑
23. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023. ↑
24. Jennifer Anglim Kreder. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases.” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 49, no. 1 (January 1, 2017): 227-240, 232. ↑
25. Kreder. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases,” 231. ↑
26. Kreder. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases,” 232. ↑
27. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Looted Art — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.” Accessed March 22, 2023. https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/looted-art. ↑
28. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023. ↑
29. Kreder. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases,” 239. ↑
30. Kreder. “International Hurdles in Nazi-Era and Russian Revolution Cultural Property Cases,” 239. ↑
31. From an interview with Philippe de Montebello, by Barbie Kim, February 15, 2023. ↑