News:

The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art (MMF) has announced the launch of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network.

The network recognizes the pre- and postwar contributions of the 350 or so men and women – art professors, museum curators, archivists, and librarians – who greatly influenced the growth and success of many of the world’s leading cultural and educational institutions.

Participation in the Museum Network is open to museums with a connection to the Monuments Men and Women.

Qualifying museums include those where Monuments Men and Women worked as directors, curators, restorers, professors, and art historians, or whose collections include works of art that they recovered.

“The Kimbell is honored to partner with the Monuments Men Foundation and its membership program supporting the Foundation’s important mission of restitution, education, and preservation,”  Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum, said in a news release on the network.

The Kimbell joins more than 20 museums across the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

Participating museums agree to provide to MMF members free admission or other benefits, such as discounts on merchandise in their museum shops.

In return, MMF will be promoting each museum’s important ties to these heroes of civilization through social media campaigns, newsletters, and other channels. The Museum Network will also encourage museums and institutions that may not be aware of their connections to the Monuments Men and Women to search their records and collections.

The Monuments Men Foundation is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal for its work honoring the legacy of the men and women who served in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives section, known as the “Monuments Men,” and their unprecedented and heroic work protecting and safeguarding civilization’s most important artistic and cultural treasures during and after World War II.

“The success of our efforts to honor the Monuments Men and Women has, until now, been focused on their wartime service,” said foundation president Anna Bottinelli. “The creation of the Monuments Men and Women Museum Network will bring much deserved visibility to their immense contribution to the world’s museums and cultural life, both before and after the war. As part of the educational component of the Foundation’s mission, the Museum Network will also enable partner institutions to profile their respective Monuments Men and Women connections.”

The foundation is based in Dallas.

Museum collections the world over contain one or more works of art the Monuments Men saved during World War II.

To date, in addition to the Kimbell, participating museums include Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Auckland Museum Institute, Cincinnati Art Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, The Courtauld Gallery, Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, MacArthur Memorial museum, Meadows Museum, four of the National Museums in Berlin (Alte Nationalgalerie, Bode-Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Neues Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), The National WWII Museum, Newfields, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philbrook Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art, U.S. Army Airborne & Special Operations Museum, and Williams College Museum of Art.

For more information on the Monuments Men and Women Network, visit:

https://www.monumentsmenfoundation.org/museum-network

For more information on the Monuments Men Foundation, visit:

www.monumentsmenfoundation.org.