Coming soon to Washington, D.C. at the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery
During World War II, an unlikely team of soldiers was charged with identifying and protecting European cultural sites, monuments, and buildings from Allied bombing. Officially named the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Section, this U.S. Army unit included art curators, scholars, architects, librarians, and archivists from the U.S. and Britain. They quickly became known as The Monuments Men.
Towards the end of the war, their mission changed to one of locating and recovering works of art that had been looted by the Nazis. The Monuments Men uncovered troves of stolen art hidden across Germany and Austria—some in castles, others in salt mines. They rescued some of history’s greatest works of art.
Among the holdings of the Archives of American Art are the papers of Monuments Men George Leslie Stout, James J. Rorimer, Walker Hancock, Thomas Carr Howe, S. Lane Faison, Walter Horn, and Otto Wittman. These personal archives tell a fascinating story.
Related blog posts:
“Monuments Men in Japan: Discoveries in the George Leslie Stout papers”
“Artful Collaborators: James J. Rorimer and Rose Valland”
Audio excerpts from the Archives’ oral history interviews.
See more: oral history interview podcasts
Stanton Catlin on Rose Valland (4:24 )
S. Lane Faison on the O.S.S. (8:36 )
Walker Hancock on locating looted art (24:01 )
Thomas Carr Howe on restitution efforts (34:54 )
Charles Parkhurst on the Weisbaden Manifesto (14:03)
Andrew Carnduff Ritchie on the MFAA (13:00 )
George Stout on conditions in the salt mines (44:40 )
Otto Wittmann on the Art Looting Investigation Unit and postwar restitution work: