Crossroads Roundup: Progress (and Conflict) in Art Restitution, Lost J.M.W. Turner Work Found, and a Giant Statue of Ramesses the Great

Our favorite stories on art, archaeology, folklore, and more from this past week.

Welcome to the Crossroads Roundup! This is our weekly roundup of news related to history, art, archaeology, and anything else that our readers might enjoy. While many of our essays are free, the Crossroads Roundup is for paid subscribers only. If you haven’t already, you can sign up below to gain access to the full archive, the Patron Podcast, and the Crossroads Roundup:

Happy Roundup! Apologies for the delay in getting this to you. Substack has been conducting maintenance on its database, and last night, I temporarily lost access to my email list. Things appear to be up and running again, so hopefully, there won’t be any issues moving forward. But earlier on Sunday, I was able to share the very first episode of the Patron Podcast—I had so much fun putting this together for you all. Remember that new episodes will premiere the first and third week of each month, so the next episode will premiere the week of March 25th.

The first episode, “Black Market Plumage and Feathered Ladies,” explores the bizarre tale of the world's largest ornithological heist, and the complicated history of rare feathers. I hope you enjoy it, and be sure to let me know which topics you’d like me to explore in future episodes!

This past week, there were several high-profile stories in the world of art restitution:

“Master Sergrant Harold Maus of Scranton, PA is pictured with the Dürer engraving, found among other art treasures at Merker.” In the aftermath of WWII, U.S. servicemen worked to uncover Nazi-looted art, but over 100,000 works are still missing. Photographed May 13, 1945. Via the U.S. National Archives.

There’s mixed news in art restitution, but ultimately, some exciting progress!

In the January 28th edition of the Crossroads Roundup, I shared the big story about Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Fräulein Lieser (1917), thought missing for the past century, coming out of the woodworks and heading for auction. In the piece, I explained the tangled, often horrifying history of art theft in World War II: “…when the Nazis rose to power, they stole over 650,000 works of art, mostly from Jewish families who were imprisoned and killed in the concentration camps. Gustav Klimt’s works were no exception, and the Jewish community who made Vienna’s Golden Age possible was utterly destroyed.”

First, the bad news: there’s still tremendous work to be done. In a major report by the World Jewish Restitution Organization, researchers found that of the 47 countries surveyed, 24 have not done sufficient research or tracking of provenance, or “made a substantial number of restitutions.” It’s estimated that over 100,000 works of art have still not been returned.