July 9, 2021—October 3, 2021

Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America

Cincinnati

This exhibition focuses on the fate of 2,000 of the finest European paintings from the Berlin State Museums that traveled to the United States in 1945 and were exhibited at the National Gallery of Art and 13 other museums across the country from 1948–49 before returning to Germany. The exhibition addresses Nazi expropriation of artworks during the war; it features four of the Berlin paintings that traveled across Europe and America during and after the war; and it explains the role of "Monuments Man" Walter Farmer, a voice of conscience who protested the paintings' export from Germany and later became a supporter of the arts in the Cincinnati region.