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Vienna-Paris: Austro-French Art

EXCITING times at Vienna's Belvedere, home of Austria's greatest art collection. The Lower Belvedere has just been restored to its early 18^th-century glory, reopening with "Vienna-Paris: Van Gogh, Cézanne and Austria's Modernists", a richly varied exhibition of Austrian and French paintings.

There was a smell of fresh paint on the walls on October 3rd, and bare wiring straggled from the ceiling. But little could steal away from the canvases, a remarkable group of French Impressionists, Klimts and Kokoschkas. The opening is a triumph for Agnes Husslein-Arco, the relatively new director of the Belvedere. She assumed her post in January, shortly after her predecessor, Gerbert Frodl, stepped down in the wake of the Belvedere’s shattering loss of five Klimts, restored to the original owners’ heir last year.

Are there any paintings with a dodgy history in this hang? Ms Husslein-Arco says that while some minor works in the collection could be Nazi spoils, none of these will be exhibited. “When I see a painting,” she says, “the first thing I do is turn it round to see what’s on the back.” Vienna’s big state museums are sensitised to possible Nazi loot in their collections, but in the Austrian provinces, different laws apply. At Linz’s Lentos Museum, for instance, a Klimt and an Emil Nolde are now the subject of restitution claims by the heirs of former Jewish owners. Proof of ownership is key, but documentation is scant, according to Sophie Lillie, a Vienna-based historian.

"It might be thought that after the Blochbauer-Altmann case, Austria could reach closure in this area,” says Ms Lillie. “In fact we are years and years away from that.”