Nazis In the Hood?

The Hood Museum of Art is investigating the origins of about 150 of its paintings and several hundred drawings. The reason? To ensure none of them have ties to the Nazis of World War II.

The museum has begun delving into the history of its works in the wake of a 1999 legal case in which Princeton University discovered that one of its paintings had previously been stolen by the Nazis (the university has since reached a deal with the heirs of the original Jewish owners to keep the Italian Renaissance painting). While the provenance of some art acquired by Dartmouth is unknown, it doesn't necessarily mean that any of the Hoods holdings were acquired illegally. But due to holes in the museum's historical records, the possibility cannot yet be ruled out. "We've gotten as much of our objects' histories as we can from our own records, but there are still a lot of gaps," explains Hood director Derrick Cartwright.

Filling in those gaps won't be easy. Much of Dartmouth's collection is composed of gifts from individual collectors with no historical records. Tracking all previous owners of a piece means scouring archives and auction proceedings, with no promise of definitive answers. "It will be at least two years before' we'll be able to say we've made serious progress on this, and it's important to note that there will always be questions you can't answer," says Cartwright. Any potentially questionable paintings will be listed online for review by heirs searching for relatives' missing possessions.