International Foundation for Art Research
Encyclopedia
International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) is a non-profit organization which was established to channel and coordinate scholarly and technical information about works of art. IFAR provides an administrative and legal framework within which experts can express their objective opinions. This data is made available to individuals, associations and government agencies.
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Founding members of the privately funded foundation were:
The first Advisory council members were:
In 1989, IFAR had become "a very grand-sounding name for what is really just three smart, dedicated, underpaid women who are among the nation's leading experts on stolen and forged art." Constance Lowethal, Margaret I. O'Brien and Virgilia H. Pancost work in an Upper East Side office which contains 30,000 files documenting stolen art cases. The three-rooms were on the fourth floor of the Explorers Club, on East 70th Street.
Selected timeline
- IFAR functions as a step towards more regularized attribution protocols in which the question is not the importance of the attribution but the correctness of it.
- IFAR is actively involved in the legal, ethical, and educational issues surrounding the ownership and theft of art.
History
IFAR was initially conceived in New York in 1969; its first president was Houston industrialist John de MénilJohn de Menil
John de Menil was an American businessman, philanthropist, and art patron. He was the founding president of the International Foundation for Art Research in New York.-Life:...
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Founding members of the privately funded foundation were:
- Harry BoberHarry BoberHarry Bober was an American art historian, a university professor, and a writer. He was the first Avalon Professor of the Humanities a New York University .-Education and early life:...
, New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, Institute of Fine Arts - Jose Lopez-Rey, NYU Institute of Fine Arts
- Lewis Goldenberg, Wildenstein & CoPaceWildensteinThe Pace Gallery is a contemporary and modern art gallery founded by Arne Glimcher in Boston 1960 as The Pace Gallery. The gallery moved to Manhattan in 1963 and from 1993 to 2010 operated jointly with Wildenstein & Co. as PaceWildenstein. There are three locations in Manhattan and one in...
, New York - Peregrine Pollen, Park-Bernet Galleries, New York
- John RewaldJohn RewaldJohn Rewald was an American academic, author and art historian. He was known as a scholar of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro, Seurat, and other French painters of the late 19th century. He was recognized as a foremost authority on late 19th-century art...
, University of ChicagoUniversity of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890... - Joseph Rothman, New York Attorney General, art frauds
The first Advisory council members were:
- Diego Angulo ÍñiguezDiego Angulo ÍñiguezDiego Angulo Iñiguez was an art historian, a university professor, writer and Director of the Prado Museum in Madrid from 1968 through 1970)....
, Prado Museum, MadridMadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan... - Francois Daulte, Bibliotheque des Arts, LausanneLausanneLausanne is a city in Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and is the capital of the canton of Vaud. The seat of the district of Lausanne, the city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva . It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura mountains to its north-west...
- Charles Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Galleries, ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
- Lloyd GoodrichLloyd GoodrichLloyd Goodrich was an influential American art historian. He wrote extensively on American artists, including Edward Hopper, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Raphael Soyer and Reginald Marsh...
, Whitney Museum, New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east... - Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Galerie Louise LeirisGalerie Louise LeirisGalerie Louise Leiris was a fine art gallery in Paris established by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler in 1920.Initially, the business was known as the Galerie Simon. It was named after Kahnweiler's partner, André Simon....
, ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region... - Lawrence Majiewski, Conservation Center, NYU Institute of Fine Arts
In 1989, IFAR had become "a very grand-sounding name for what is really just three smart, dedicated, underpaid women who are among the nation's leading experts on stolen and forged art." Constance Lowethal, Margaret I. O'Brien and Virgilia H. Pancost work in an Upper East Side office which contains 30,000 files documenting stolen art cases. The three-rooms were on the fourth floor of the Explorers Club, on East 70th Street.
Database
IFAR compiled information about stolen art; and by 1990, IFAR was updating its catalogue of stolen art 10 times a year. In 1991, IFAR helped to establish the Art Loss Register (ALR) as a commercial enterprise. IFAR managed ALR's U.S. operations through 1997. In 1998, ALR assumed full responsibility for the database although IFAR retains ownership.Development
In response to the growth and development of IFAR, museum officials have revised some policies based on an assumption that discussing theft would scare away potential donors. The change from policies of secrecy to ones which emphasize openness was gradual, mirroring an expectation that publicizing theft is likely to promote recovery.Selected timeline
- 1998: The World Jewish CongressWorld Jewish CongressThe World Jewish Congress was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 1936 as an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations...
established the Commission for Art Recovery to recover art taken from Jewish collectors before and during World War II . Constance Lowenthal, then executive director of the IFAR, was selected as its initial executive director. - 1997: The United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumUnited States Holocaust Memorial MuseumThe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
in Washington started the Holocaust Art Restitution Project (HARP) in order to document and publish Jewish artwork which still remains missing. HARP developed and maintains an archive and database for families who have lost works and want to find them. HARP will not seek recover art. - 1990: Artworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumIsabella Stewart Gardner MuseumThe Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Court, as the museum was known during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime, is a museum in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts and near the Back Bay Fens...
in Boston include VermeerJohannes VermeerJohannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
's ConcertThe Concert (Vermeer)The Concert is a painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The 69 centimeter high by 63 centimeter wide picture depicts a man and two women playing music. It belongs to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, but was stolen in March 1990 and remains missing to this day...
, three Rembrandts and five works by DegasEdgar DegasEdgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
. - 1989: IFAR received reports of about 5,000 thefts.