ARTS & CULTURE
Walter Farmer holds a painting at Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point. P H O T O : L I N D S AY C . K E N N E T H PA P E R S , S P E C I A L C O L L E C T I O N S , B I N G H A M TO N U N I V E RS IT Y L I B R A R I E S, B I N G H A M T O N U N I V E R S I T Y, S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W YO R K
Cincinnati ‘Monuments Man’ Walter Farmer Protected European Art After World War II The Cincinnati Art Museum’s Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men explores the intersection of history, politics, art and the controversial American tour of German-owned masterpieces in the 1940s BY R I C K P E N D E R
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f the title of an upcoming exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) has a familiar ring, that’s probably thanks to George Clooney’s 2014 movie, The Monuments Men, which he starred in, wrote and directed. But the CAM’s show — Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America — is significantly closer to reality than the fictionalized film, which plays like a lighthearted men-on-a-mission buddy caper to save international artworks from being plundered or destroyed by the Nazi regime during World War II. Established in 1943 under the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies, the Monuments, Fine Art and Archives program was an honorable endeavor to preserve
cultural artifacts across Europe both during and after the war. The program protected (and returned) artworks, archives and monuments of historical significance that had been forcefully obtained by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. One of the central figures in the program was Walter Farmer, Cincinnati’s own “Monuments Man.” Farmer, an architect and Miami University graduate who joined the Army and became part of the military engineering corps, directed the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point in Germany, where, starting in 1945, paintings of tremendous cultural significance and value were gathered, documented and
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