On Why Nazi Looted Art Should Be Restituted

Baroness Deech

(seated, far left)

In the House of Lords Second Reading of the UK's Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Bill, 10 July 2009, Baroness Deech, spoke eloquently of why Nazi looted art should be restituted:

"Art is an ethical issue. Displaying looted art, once it is known to be such, is not just an invasion of privacy and a demonstration that wrongdoers may indeed profit from their crimes; it is also putting on show something that the owners never meant to be seen in such circumstances. It has ceased to be an object of beauty and one that museums can be proud of or use for educational and aesthetic aims. The spectator cannot look at it without seeing the pain and betrayal that led it to be situated there in a national museum. It taints the spectators who knowingly take advantage of the presence of the picture there and it speaks to them of loss and war, not creativity and insight. It is a well known principle in physics that the act of observation changes the object observed and there is something of that principle in our viewing of looted art."