Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Rape of Europa

I watched the Rape of Europa last night - a documentary about the theft and recovery of art during WWII by the Nazi regime. It was a fascinating film - highly recommended. I was especially interested in all the work that went into protecting works of art during the war - from packing and shipping works out of the Louvre, to building brick tombs to protect Michelangelo sculptures in Florence from possible bombings:


(during WWII)
present day (photo by flickr user noll)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That reminds me of the movie, "Threads". During a inevitable nuclear attack in Britain and amidst the absolute panic on the streets of people trying to get supplies/etc, they cut to the inside of an art museum, that's *carefully* taking paintings off the wall, to put in a basement vault (or, whatever).

In 5 minutes, the entire city is then destroyed and I don't think anyone cares about art, anymore. Anywhere.

Nathan said...

I agree that it seems hard to imagine cities in the 21st century coming together to save their art from destruction. I think it would be hard to convince the public that a lot of modern art is worth saving...

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