Tuesday, May 1, 2012

HIKIND DEMANDS METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART UNMASK GERTRUDE STEIN’S NAZI PAST

PRESS RELEASE

STEIN COLLECTED WHILE FELLOW JEWS WERE MURDERED

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.

“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.

Gertrude Stein at home in France with
Vichy bureaucrat Bernard Fay
“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.

1 comment:

  1. Dear  ,
    they are right 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 .

    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 .

    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 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 .

    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 .

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