Madam, - Those people throwing stones at that excellent institution, the Hunt Museum in Limerick, should now step forward and state explicitly what items in its collection they believe to be of dubious provenance. They should tell the public where their information comes from, document their sources and allegations scrupulously, and place them within the proper context.
As it is, what appears to be largely a matter of art scholarship and research has been dragged into the political arena and basic issues are obfuscated. The intrusion of the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation is little short of a disaster. Its responsibility is to track down Nazi war criminals; its competence in art matters is open to question, to phrase things mildly. As a result, the whole controversy has now been tainted fatally with the smell of the gas ovens.
As Dr Peter Harbison and others have pointed out, the second World War and its immediate aftermath created utter chaos in the world of art collecting and art scholarship. The Nazis looted or impounded art treasures widely and systematically, to begin with; then massive, unsystematic looting followed as the Russians swept across Eastern and Central Europe (Marshal Zhukov, for one, is known to have lived in a mansion largely furnished with war plunder). Some of the American GIs were not far behind. And of course there was the wholesale destruction caused by Allied bombing, the looting of homes by hungry or rapacious locals, the transfer of populations, dispersal of assets, hurried sales of art works by old families on the edge of starvation, etc.
Records were often lost or destroyed, art works vanished underground to surface mysteriously decades later, and accurate accounting went by the board. As a result, today there are continual claims, counter-claims and lawsuits by relatives and others concerned - in some cases against private individuals, in others against reputable museums and institutions, including some American ones. (These cases are regularly documented in that excellent publication The Art Newspaper.) Meanwhile, an army of lawyers, legislators and international scholars labour to bring some order out of chaos.
The late John Hunt was known as a scrupulous scholar and dealer who built up a remarkable collection through knowledge and shrewd judgment, good contacts, and sheer professionalism. If a few things of dubious provenance happened to leak past him, he was only one of the many in his field who inherited a chaotic situation. Personally, I never remember hearing any insinuations against him of illegality or even sharp practice.
It is a huge pity, then, that such a valuable bequest to the nation should be tainted by allegations for which no convincing proof - in fact, no real proof at all - has so far been offered. - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN FALLON, Manor Kilbride, Co Wicklow.