Washington Principle #6: A Critique
[Editor’s note: Due to the momentous nature of the upcoming international conference in Berlin, Germany, entitled “20 years Washington Principles: Roadmap for the Future,” it would be worthwhile to revisit these Principles and to put them through a linguistic, methodological and substantive meat grinder, and see what comes out of this critique. There will be eleven articles, each one devoted to one of the Principles enacted in a non-binding fashion in Washington, DC, on December 3, 1998.]
Principle #6
VI. Efforts should be made to establish a central registry of such information.
“a central registry”:
The best way to kill an idea is to promote it and then abandon it. Ever since the “art restitution” movement kicked up some dust, there was talk of creating a central database of all art losses suffered by Jewish owners between 1933 and 1945. As the saying goes, talk is cheap while money talks. In the heady days of the late 1990s, much like the frightening realities which have set in worldwide as of 2016, it was easy to discuss the creation of a central database—a digital registry—of all cultural losses because no one had done it and, to accomplish this minor feat, one needed access to documents and lots of them (Principle #2), as well as a heap of resources and personnel (Principle #3). Since neither were forthcoming, then and now, twenty years later, the proposal put forth by the framers of the Principles is somewhat disingenuous.
After all, do they understand what effort it takes to undertake a central registry of all art
“confiscated” and displaced by the Nazis and their allies? It is a massive undertaking, which requires international cooperation, international partners, staff at multiple sites, a rugged online database, even more rugged servers, and teams of data extractors and data entry specialists. In 2018 dollars, a multi-million dollar affair. In 1998 dollars, it would have been much cheaper to accomplish.
The arguments around a central registry are legendary and date back to the aftermath of WWII when some of the Allied cultural advisers working in Munich, Germany, were bemoaning the fact that there was no central card index of art losses available for them to use as a reference source.
That discussion of a central registry died miserably especially when it became obvious that large postwar NGOs like the recently-established UNESCO did not succeed in taking over from the Allied powers the mantle of documenting and researching art losses suffered by victims of Nazism and Fascism.
In the 1990s, the idea has been repeatedly pooh-poohed as too expensive, impossible to undertake, and so forth. Meanwhile, as the arguments linger on from year to year, nothing gets done, which seems to be the point, no? So, proposing a central registry of art losses is tantamount to crying: The King is dead! Long live the King!—Substitute queen for king if that is your preference. In other words, it will not get done by the signatories of the Washington Principles because they have no interest in such a project. Why did they agree to it? Why sign off? Because it was easier to sign off than to challenge the idea, a hint that the intention to transform the principles into “hard law” never existed.
In June 2011, we noted that, based on the evidence, “Principle #6 is hereby decreed to be an unadulterated sham.” We still believe it today.
Principle #6 could be rewritten and broadened as follows:
Efforts shall be made to establish a central, fully searchable and interactive digital repository of artistic, cultural and ritual objects confiscated, misappropriated, sold under duress and/or forced sales, subjected to other forms of illicit acts of dispossession by the Nazis, their supporters, profiteers and their Fascist allies across Europe between 1933 and 1945.
