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The story of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen during the Second World War is an emotionally charged one: a director who bent to the will of the occupying power and patrons who sold works of art to the Nazis. At the same time, the museum played an important role as a centre of art and culture and the guardian of culture in the devastated city of Rotterdam. This Boijmans Study examines the role of the museum and its patrons during the war. The story would not be complete, however, without an account of the museum’s spectacular development in the interwar years. To a significant extent, it had the Rotterdam shipping magnates D.G. van Beuningen and Willem van der Vorm and the Haarlem banker Franz Koenigs to thank for the growth of its collection. Their passion for collecting and their patronage are seen against the background of great changes in affluence, which drove a flourishing international art trade. The book ends with an account of seven special cases of research into the sometimes complicated provenance of works of art in the museum’s collection.
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