(Photo By: John Parnell, Photo © The Jewish Museum, New York)
By: Cathryn J. Prince - Aug 20, 2021
In 1937, the Nazi Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda removed Marc Chagall’s “Purim” from the walls of the Museum of Folkwang in Essen, Germany. Depicting people exchanging food and sweets, the vibrant painting was deemed “degenerate” and summarily sold to a Berlin art collector and Nazi party member.
Now, 75 years after the end of World War II, the painting is one of 53 works of art and 80 ceremonial objects on display at New York’s Jewish Museum.
The exhibit, titled “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art,” opens Friday and will run through January 2022. Recounting how these works withstood the violence of war, it details their often-complicated postwar rescue in a meditation on loss and recovery — both on an individual and collective scale.
Read More: Times of Israel