Monuments Men Foundation Launches Monuments Men and Women Museum Network

DALLAS, May 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art (MMF) is pleased to announce 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.

Museum collections the world over contain one or more works of art the Monuments Men saved during World War II. "The success of our efforts to honor the Monuments Men and Women has, until now, been focused on their wartime service," remarked 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."

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.

More than twenty museums across the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, and New Zealand have already joined. Eric M. Lee, Director of the Kimbell Art Museum said, "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." Adam M. Levine, the Toledo Museum of Art's Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey Director and CEO, commented, "The TMA has been a long-standing and proud supporter of the mission of the Monuments Men Foundation and is proud to be one of the charter members of the Foundation's Museum Network." Prof. Dr. Michael Eissenhauer, General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, said "Your initiative to strengthen the ties between the MMF and institutions that the Monuments Men and Women helped build into what they are today is remarkable. To honor the legacy of the Monuments Men and Women is crucial and to value their deeds is an important aspect of our history."

To date, 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, Kimbell Art 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.

Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art

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 from armed conflict. During its first 12 years of operations, the Foundation successfully raised worldwide awareness about the Monuments Men and Women through film, television, and books, honored their military service through the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal – the highest civilian honor bestowed by the United States – and preserved their legacy through a partnership with the National World War II Museum making the Foundation's incomparable archives and artifacts accessible to students and scholars around the world. In October 2020, the Museum broke ground on its Liberation Pavilion, which will feature a permanent exhibition about the Monuments Men and Women, the first of its kind. 

Now in its second decade of operations, the Foundation's focus has shifted to longer term objectives, including locating and returning works of art and other cultural objects to their rightful owners. The Foundation is also putting the remarkable legacy of the Monuments Men and Women to work through custom-designed programs that not only educate and inform our youth, but challenge them to become the Monuments Men and Women of tomorrow.

For more information, please visit www.monumentsmenfoundation.org.

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SOURCE Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art

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