“We have asked the national museums to guarantee the provenance of all works exhibited or deposited in these institutions in order to avoid any kind of questionable origin,” said the minister.
The Prado National Museum compiled and published this Tuesday the complete list of the works deposited in its collections of the General Commission for the Defense of Artistic Heritage. There are 25 pieces that were “probably” seized by the Artistic Treasure Seizure and Protection Board during the Civil War and delivered to the museum at the end of the conflagration.
“What the Prado Museum is doing is very well done and part of the ministry’s policy,” Culture Minister Miquel Iceta said this morning. He went on to explain that all those in charge of the national museums who depend on the ministry have been asked to “guard the origin” of all works exhibited or deposited in these institutions “to avoid any kind of questionable origin.” to avoid”.
Iceta gave as an example some works confiscated by Pedro Rico, Mayor of Madrid during the Republican period, whose assets were seized by the Artistic Treasure Board on June 9, 1938 and placed in a post-war depot by the Artistic Heritage Defense Service. posted. “And it was heritage -specifically the minister-, but the holders were private”. According to Iceta, the family’s lawyer provided a file of the seized works in January 2022 to try to determine their whereabouts, something that the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage and Fine Arts, depending on the ministry, started working on. So far, documents have been obtained from the Salamanca Historical Memory Documentation Center and three of the works of art whose whereabouts were unknown. “We – Iceta continued – want all works deposited in the entities to have their origin perfectly accredited and if there has been an unfair and irregular confiscation for reasons such as the war or what happened after that, carry out a return procedure.” On the other hand, in the case of documents, “we are still willing to keep them in the custody of official bodies, but if they are private documents and families claim them for themselves, there is nothing left to say. We do not want anything that has been obtained illegally as public heritage and that is why we are going to work in that direction.
Source: La Verdad

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