Musée d’Orsay Displays Potentially Looted Art

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France, now features a permanent display of 13 artworks with unclear ownership histories from World War II. The exhibit, titled “Who Owns These Works?”, aims to help identify the original owners of pieces potentially stolen or sold under duress during the Nazi occupation. The museum holds roughly 225 artworks not owned by the state, many separated from families during the war.

One painting, Edgar Degas’ The Dinner at the Ball, belonged to Jewish art collector Fernand Ochsé before passing to a man named Coutot, a transaction curators now question. Another work, an 1891 portrait by Alfred Stevens, was purchased by a German dealer “for Hitler” in 1942. During the war, over 100,000 cultural artifacts were looted from France, with about 60,000 recovered.

Six experts currently research the remaining 2,200 unreturned works. The Musée d’Orsay has returned 15 pieces over the last thirty years, most recently in 2024. The museum plans to rotate the displayed artworks as research continues, hoping to connect more pieces with their rightful heirs.