Tel Aviv Museum reexamines donation from fortune of Nazi war criminal
Institution looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars given a decade ago by Ingrid Flick, who inherited money from German industrialist found guilty of war crimes
The Tel Aviv Museum of Art is reexamining its acceptance of donations tied to the fortune of a Nazi war criminal, Artnet reported this week.
Ingrid Flick is listed on a wall of wealthy donors to the museum after contributing some $670,000 dollars to it a decade ago. But the source of Flick’s money has recently drawn renewed scrutiny: She inherited much of her wealth via her late husband from the fortune of Friedrich Flick.
Flick was a German industrialist who had close ties to the Nazi party and SS, made key contributions to the war effort and profited from the appropriation of Jewish businesses. He was convicted after World War II of war crimes for making use of slave labor during the conflict and served three years in prison. He died in 1972 a very rich man.
A spokeswoman for the museum told Artner on Thursday that “The current leadership of the museum is thoroughly reviewing the situation. They will assess their position regarding this donation and take appropriate action based on their assessment.”
Flick told the outlet that “as a person with an affinity for art and a collector of modern art, it has been a personal desire of mine for many years to support art that is also open to the public.
“The Tel Aviv Museum of Art was, therefore, only one of several institutions to which I am pleased to donate. This donation and my personal motivation to contribute to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has nothing to do with the history of my late husband’s family. Such speculation serves only to insult the valuable work of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which I will gladly continue to support in the future.”
The museum saw controversy earlier this month over a conference it was due to host with the Christie’s auction house. The December conference was meant to cap a year-long series by Christie’s celebrating the 25th anniversary of an agreement on the restitution of Nazi-looted art. But the museum faced criticism for working with Christie’s after the auction house held a $202 million sale of jewelry belonging to a family that became rich partially by dispossessing Jews during the Holocaust.
The Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA had said the event would provide “a platform within the Jewish state for Holocaust profiteers to justify their plunder.”
The museum canceled the conference amid the criticism. “The Tel Aviv Art Museum is attentive to criticism and bound by public sentiment and has decided not to host the ‘Reflecting on Restitution’ conference with Christie’s,” it said then.
The museum added in the statement that it has “a longstanding professional relationship with Christie’s” and that the December conference would have included families of Holocaust survivors, in addition to historians and legal experts.
It said the conference “was planned long before” the controversial sale of jewelry belonging to the late Heidi Horten. Horten, who died in 2022, was the wife of the late Helmut Horten, a member of the Nazi Party who dispossessed Jews of their businesses in a process called “Aryanization.”
JTA contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.