An expert group that examined claims in 2004 that parts of the Hunt Museum in Limerick may have been looted by Nazis has found that most of the items under suspicion were unlikely to have a "problematic past." Arthur Beesley reports.
The group said in a report to the Royal Irish Academy that it was frustrated by the absence of any specific allegation about any individual object in the complaint to President Mary McAleese by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris. "This is the opposite of the situation in other contexts," the report said.
The Wiesenthal centre did not reply to questions from the group, which was chaired by a former head of the Department of Finance, Seán Cromien.
The report cited research by museum director Virginia Teehan into the Wiesenthal centre's claims that the couple who amassed the collection had Nazi links. The late John and Gertrude Hunt were not named on any official "blacklists" of Nazi sympathisers in Ireland, she found.
The group said there were no provenance records for most of the items that were likely or known to have been in Europe in the second World War period.
Most of the museum's provenance records, which outline the origin of objects and their ownership history, date from the 1950s to the early 1970s.
"There are many reasons for gaps in provenance, ranging from a past owner's desire for anonymity to an absence of records of transactions. Resolving provenance gaps for the period in question may be further complicated by the fact that records were lost or destroyed during the second World War," it said.
"Most of the objects in the Hunt Museum with gaps in their provenance are unlikely to have problematic pasts." The group said the personal collection of John Hunt, who became an antique dealer in the 1930s, was probably not formed until his business became somewhat established. "Photographs from John and Gertrude Hunt's home in the late 1930s and 1940s show some objects which are now in the Hunt collection, indicating that by this stage the collection had begun to be formed," it said.
"Although it is probable that most of the objects with gaps do not have problematic pasts, continued efforts using all the available sources and by way of appeals for information are under way to obtain more information about them."