For the first time, the Archives’ exhibition, “MONUMENTS MEN: On the Frontline to Save Europe’s Art, 1942-1946,” will present the photographs, official records, maps, correspondence and audio interviews that chronicle these extraordinary men’s mission, from the formation of the Civil Conservation Corps in the United States, to locating and recovering major works of art that had been looted by the Germans. The exhibition will be on display from Feb. 7 to April 20 in the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery at the Smithsonian’s Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.
The Archives acquired the personal papers of one of the prominent Monuments Men, Stout, who was a well-respected art conservator and instructor at the Fogg Museum in Boston. Stout developed the plan for the conservation corps that led to the formation in 1943 of the Roberts Commission, known formally as the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas. The exhibition will display Stout’s correspondence during the commission’s development and his time in Germany, as well as field manuals and maps of cultural sites that the military carried with them from D-Day through V-E Day.
The personal papers of another prominent Monuments Men officer, Rorimer, reveal his close collaboration with Rose Valland, a French art historian at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris, who spied on the Nazis and kept detailed notes, lists and photographs of stolen artwork and hidden storage locations. Her clandestine efforts provided the Monuments Men with valuable documents and photographs of the massive collections of stolen art hidden across Germany and Austria.
The Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery is located at the Smithsonian’s Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture on Eighth and F Street, N.W. in Washington, D.C., and is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, visit the Archives website at: http://www.aaa.si.edu/