Museum removes paintings amid Nazi looting probe

A museum in Switzerland will take down five paintings suspected of being looted by Nazis after new international guidelines were laid out earlier this year to aid restitution of art that was previously stolen or forcibly sold. 

Kunsthaus Zurich Museum said the paintings – by Monet, Courbet, Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and Gauguin – will be removed from display while an investigation is conducted.

The works form part of the Emil Bührle Collection, which has previously been the subject of provenance questions. 

Bührle was an arms dealer who sold weapons to the Nazis in World War Two. When he died in 1956, he had built a collection of some 600 artworks, many of which are on display at the Kunsthaus as part of a 20-year loan.

Switzerland is one of more than 20 countries that signed up to the US State Department’s Best Practices for Restitution of Nazi-Confiscated Art in March. 

Stuart Eizenstat, the US secretary of State's special advisor on Holocaust issues, said the guidance sought to address "over 100,000 of the 600,000 paintings and many more of the millions of books, manuscripts, ritual religious items and other cultural objects stolen that have never been returned".

Under existing Swiss law, descendants seeking to recover artworks from the Bührle collection have no legal claims for restitution or compensation due to statutes of limitations.

The Emil Buhrle Collection board said it is "committed to seeking a fair and equitable solution for these works with the legal successors of the former owners, following best practices".