Experts find no provenance records for most Hunt items

An expert group that examined claims that some of the Hunt Museum collection may have been looted by Nazis found that there were no provenance records for the overwhelming majority of museum items that were likely or known to have been in Europe during the second World War.

Chaired by former department of finance secretary general Seán Cromien, the group reported to the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) on questions raised about the collection by the Paris office of the Simon Wiesenthal anti-Nazi organisation in 2004.

In a letter to the President, Mary McAleese, the Wiesenthal centre also alleged that the couple who amassed the collection, the late John Hunt and his late wife Gertrude, had Nazi connections.

The group said in its final report to the RIA that "most of the objects with gaps in their provenance are unlikely to have problematic pasts".

It said the museum should make public any doubts about the collection, and said any claimants must be dealt with openly and their claims given the highest priority.

The report said that no provenance information was available for 845 of 959 "high-priority" items that were highly likely or known to have been on the continent of Europe in 1933-45.

This included 165 objects that were difficult to identify individually because they were incomplete, broken, very common or parts of other items.

"Many of the objects rated high-priority have histories of ownership that contain very little detail or have long gaps. Intensive research on these objects was begun in 2005. The project is still at an early stage," it said.

"The scarcity of provenance for the period 1933 to 1945 needs to be placed in context. John Hunt began his career as an antique dealer in the early 1930s, and his personal collection was probably not formed until his business became somewhat established."

The report says the Hunts came to Ireland in 1940, and said there would have been little opportunity to collect objects outside Ireland during the war.

The Wiesenthal centre did not identify any specific artefacts or works of art as being under suspicion.

However, its director of international relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, said in 2004 that he had information to support its claims and would publish it "when we're ready".

In its report the expert group said it was frustrated by the absence of any specific allegation about any individual object.

The group wrote to the Wiesenthal centre to establish what evidence it had and have that evidence assessed by an independent external adviser.

"Regrettably, no reply has been received to date," it said.

"Conducting the research in the absence of reference to specific objects is asking the impossible and akin to looking for a needle in a haystack."

Dr Samuels did not return a phone call last night.

Among other claims, he said in 2004 that "sources" had indicated that John and Gertrude Hunt had "intimate business relationships with notorious dealers in art looted by the Nazis".

He also said the arrival in Ireland of the Hunts in 1940 was "one step ahead of British suspicions of their alleged espionage".

The expert group said it was not asked to examine the allegations made in respect of John and Gertrude Hunt. However, it drew attention to an appendix report by the museum's director, Virginia Teehan, in which she found no reference to the couple on contemporaneous "black lists" of suspected Nazi sympathisers.

"The Hunts were not named in any of the consulted lists of individuals resident in Ireland identified by British and American authorities as being members of the Nazi Party or having provided direct or indirect economic or other support to it."

The group was funded by the RIA, which received a special grant from the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

Its other members were: Dr Michael Ryan, director of the Chester Beatty Library; Dr Anne Kelly of the school of art history and cultural policy in UCD; and Ms Helen Wechsler of the American Association of Museums.