While the incomparable Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd does not take place in Dresden, that is where today brought news of a robbery at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the State Art Collections that house the treasures of the Free State of Saxony. Specifically, two thieves broke into the Grünes Gewölbe—the Green Vault—which holds the rarest objects of all. Headlines understandably honed in on monetary values in the hundreds of millions or even billions, but these objects are, in fact, priceless. It is a horrifying crime against a rich cultural heritage in an historic city.
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Topics:
Holy Roman Empire,
Dresden,
DDR,
Gemäldegalerie Dresden,
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden,
East Germany,
Tashkent,
Paris Court of Appeal,
Goodnight Moon,
Anne Hawley,
House of Wettin,
Augustus the Strong,
Zwinger,
Frauenkirche,
Rezidenzschloss,
Fürstenzug,
Gottfried Semper,
Grünes Gewölbe,
Margaret Wise Brown,
Clement Hurd,
Residenzschloss,
Green Vault,
Thomas Crown affair,
Bond villain,
Marion Ackerman,
Michael Kretschmer,
Free State of Saxony,
Freistaat Sachsen,
Electorate of Saxony,
Thirty Years War,
Schatzkammer,
Wittelsbach,
GDR
Debate has peaked in the last year or so about the treatment and possible restitution of so-called colonial artifacts in Western (i.e., European and North American) museums. The conversation is important for many reasons, but one interesting facet is the way in which the discussion moved from a peripheral topic to one consuming high-level government attention in a very short amount of time. In the process, institutions that have been devoted for well over a century to artistic, archeologic, and ethnographic displays have found themselves in a very public conversation about the future and even the validity of their mission. This discourse culminated last fall in a report commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron, authored by Bénédicte Savoy of France and Felwine Sarr of Senegal, recommending (among other things, as discussed below), that objects sent to France should be returned if the country of origin requests it. Germany has now joined the conversation with the announcement of a collective declaration addressed to the collection of German federal and state museums.
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Topics:
Berlin,
ICOM,
Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste,
Germany,
Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art,
SPK,
Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
International Council of Museums,
1970 UNESCO Convention,
Monika Grütters,
Art Law Report,
Capital Requirements Regulation,
Bénédicte Savoy,
Felwine Sarr,
Emmanuel Macron,
Humboldt Forum,
Unter den Linden,
Stadtschloss,
Frederick the Great,
East Germany,
Volkskammer,
Collective Declaration,
Dahlem,
Nama,
Namibia,
Federal Ministry of Culture, Media, and Sport,
Länder,
German South West Africa,
Deutsches Zentrum Kulturverluste,
Ethnological Museum,
Gemäldegalerie,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Herero
