You’ve seen this image before. Of course you have. If nothing else, at least a cheap print in a college dorm. (I had one myself. I mean, it’s beautiful, albeit cliché at this point.) It’s Gustav Klimt’s Gold Portrait, stolen from Viennese Jews in 1938 and now the most expensive painting ever sold — and the opening subject of The Rape of Europa, an “epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction, and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during World War II.” Have you heard of the Venus Fixers, the Monument Men, the Roberts Commission, the MFAA? They were essentially a pared down Secret Service of the art world through the 1940s — young museum directors, curators, art professors, and architects who volunteered to protect Europe’s strong artistic cultural history by policing looting, theft, destruction, and artistic loss of any kind. The Rape of Europa maps out Europe’s artistic loss at the hands of the Nazis over the course of twelve years — the most savage theft and destruction of art to date. See the film this evening and carry the experience to full hilt with a discussion led by Corine Wegener, assistant curator in the Department of Architecture, Design, Decorative Arts, Craft, and Sculpture; and Erika Holmquist-Wall, curatorial assistant in the Department of Paintings and Modern Sculpture.
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