Controversy Over Nazi-Looted Items on Display at Reopened Scotland Museum

”As long as the provenance of these items is established by experts and curators, it should always be made public,” he told The Scotsman. “The question the public will ask is ‘what do they have to hide? I find the refusal rather curious. Curators of museums always want the truth to be out, and unvarnished at that.”

The museum also displayed in its reopening other looted items unrelated to World War II including a 200-year-old ritual wine vessel that was stolen during a raid of British troops on the Summer Palace in Beijing, China, in 1901, according to The Scotsman. The item dates back to the Han Dynasty.

Glasglow Life said in a statement that the looting of the palace was “officially sanctioned” and that “there is nothing to suggest Sir William Burrell was made aware works he was buying originated from forced sales.”

The Burrell Collection also has in storage an early 16th-century Swiss tapestry called “The Visitation,” which was bought by Burrell in 1938 after it was sold from the estate of a German Jewish woman named Emma Budge. Budge’s heirs laid claim to the item and Glasgow agreed to pay compensation for it, according to the Scottish Daily Express. The tapestry was not on display at the museum’s reopening but it did display a painting called “Pate de Jambon” by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, whose Jewish owners were forced by Nazi authorities to sell.

Errol Francis, an art expert in the United Kingdom and head of the arts charity Culture&, told The Times it would be “shocking” if the museum displayed to the public Nazi-looted items in its reopening. He also called for an audit of every item in the Burrell Collection to make sure nothing else can be connected back to the Holocaust.