New York, NY – Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) is demanding that The Metropolitan Museum of Art reveal that its exhibit “The Steins Collect” was owned and collected by fascist/Nazi-collaborator Gertrude Stein.
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“The Steins Collect”—a popular exhibit currently on display at the Met, which includes art from Matisse, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Renoir and Picasso—is scheduled to remain on display until June 3rd. However nowhere are visitors of the collection informed of the owner Gertrude Stein’s dark past.
“Stein’s despicable behavior while her fellow Jews—men, women and children—were being rounded up for deportation to work camps and gas chambers may be well known to historians, and likely to curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but this information should be equally available to people patronizing the museum,” Assemblyman Hikind wrote to Dr. Thomas P. Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “As a legislator, a New Yorker, a child of Holocaust survivors, and a representative of one of the largest communities of Holocaust survivors in the United States, I was deeply disturbed to learn that the museum is displaying ‘The Steins Collect’ without any acknowledgement of Gertrude Stein’s involvement with France’s fascists as a Nazi Collaborator.”
Neither the museum’s website nor “The Steins Collect” display make any reference to Gertrude Stein’s dark past. It is a matter of fact that, among other things, Stein lobbied for a Nobel Peace Prize for Adolph Hitler and was only allowed to remain in France and continue collecting art because she aided the Vichy government in its collaboration with the Nazis.
“People need to know these facts,” said Assemblyman Hikind. “People need to know who owned this art and how she came to maintain it while her fellow Jews were being robbed, tortured and murdered. Indeed, the collection should be presented as collected and safeguarded by a Nazi Collaborator. The Metropolitan Museum of Art must take responsibility for this historical accountability.”
Assemblyman Hikind is demanding full disclosure of this information for the many people who will visit “The Steins Collect” at the Met.
Good for Mr. Hikind. This is a good idea and he should get credit for his intelligent consideration.
Way to go, Dov.
Was she Jewish? What exactly was her collaboration?
The question is Who actually owned the paintings?
#5 Her personal life and sexual preferences are not relevant here. Her collaboration certainly is, and Hikind is correct to demand that it be made known at the exhibit.
“#5 Her personal life and sexual preferences are not relevant here.”
I at least took the trouble to euphemize. You, on the other hand, have spelled things out.
But thank you for taking the time and the trouble to repeat exactly what I had already written.
Dear ,
they are right for looking for the historic truth about Gertrude Stein in this however wonderfull exhibition,”The Steins Collect;Matisse,Picasso,Cezanne and the Parisian Avant Garde” in NewYork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art .
Because what a pleasure to see the portrait of Gertrude Stein by Riba-Rovira .Who was as Picasso an antifascist and antinazi artist .Persecuted by Franco and the Nazis .
But who is in this exhibition ,thanks to Rebecca Rabinow and Edward Burns, perhaps
the only one artist would fought them weapons in his hands .
Whose father was in jail after the spanish civil war .So Riba-Rovira is beside Tchelitchew and Balthus and Francis Rose near Picabia and Picasso in the last room of this exhibition with Cézanne, Matisse .
And you have an interesting article in Appollo London Revew about him .And also in Artes Magazine from San Francisco where the exhibition was before .
going on my part2 comment
But the main document as a revelation is with the mention beside the picture with the Preface Gertrude Stein wrote for first Riba-Rovira’s exhibition in the Galerie Roquepine in Paris on 1945 .
Where we can read Gertrude Stein writing Riba-Rovira “will go farther than Cezanne…will succeed in where Picasso failed…I am fascinated ” by Riba-Rovira Gertrude Stein tells us .
And you are you also fascinated indeed as Gertrude Stein by Riba-Rovira ?
Me I am when I see « L’Arlequin » on the free access website of « Galeria Muro ».
But Gertrude Stein spoke also in this same document about Matisse and Juan Gris .
Riba-Rovira went each week in Gertrude Stein’s saloon rue Christine with Masson ,Hemingway and others. By Edward Burns and Carl Van Vechten we can know Riba-Rovira did others portraits of Gertrude Stein .
But we do not know where they are ;and you do you know perhaps ?
With this wonderful portrait we do not forget it is the last time Gertrude Stein sat for an artist who is Riba-Rovira .
This exhibition presents us a world success with this last painting portrait before she died .And her last Gertrude Stein’s Art Retrospective before dead .
going on my comment part3 .
It illuminates the tone as an esthetic light over that exhibition now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York thanks to Curator Rebecca Rabinow .
Coming from San Francisco “Seeing five stories” in the Jewish museum to Washington in National Portrait Gallery .And now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York for our pleasure .
And the must is to see for the first time in the same place portraits by Picasso, Picabia, Riba-Rovira, Rose ,Tall-Coat, Valloton .Never before it was .
You have the translate of Gertrude Stein’s Riba-Rovira Preface on english Gertrude Stein’s page on Wikipedia and in the catalog of this Roquepine exhibition you can see in first place the mention of this portrait .And also other pictures Gertrude Stein bought to Riba-Rovira .
There is another place where you can see now Riba-Rovira’s works in an exhibition in Valencia in Spain “Homenage a Gertrude Stein” by Riba-Rovira in Galleria Muro ,if you like art .
But we do not missed today that all over Europe a very bad wind is blowing again bringing the worth in front of us .And we must know that at least were two antinazis and antifascists in this exhibition .
Going on the end of my comment part4 .
But the only one fighting weapons in hands would be Riba-Rovira .Who did one of the first three « affiches » supporting Republicans in the beguining Spanish civil war .
Remember Guernica .
Seeing Potrait of Gertrude Stein by Riba-Rovira in the Metropolitain Museum of New York with Picasso ,Cézanne ,Matisse we feel a recreation of spirit .
With the current controversy about Gertrude Stein and after the Edward Burns’s answer it is interesting to Know one of the last Gertrude Stein’s vew before dying when she speaks about art it is also politic .
Stein’s preface to the exhibition by Francisco Riba Rovira at Roquepine Gallery in May 1945:
« It is inevitable that when we really need someone we find him. The person you need attracts you like a magnet. I returned to Paris, after these long years spent in the countryside and I needed a young painter, a young painter who would awaken me. Paris was magnificent, but where was the young painter? I looked everywhere: at my contemporaries and their followers. I walked a lot, I looked everywhere, in all the galleries, but the young painter was not there. Yes, I walk a lot, a lot at the edge of the Seine where we fish, where we paint, where we walk dogs (I am of those who walk their dogs). Not a single young painter!
One day, on the corner of a street, in one of these small streets in my district, I saw a man painting. I looked at him; at him and at his painting, as I always look at everybody who creates something I have an indefatigable curiosity to look and I was moved. Yes, a