On April 29, 2026 at 5 pm, the University Foundationl organizes an event on the theme "Which Restitution Policy for nazi looted art ?". Four speakers will explain different experiences and perspectives about it: Ann Demeester, director of the Kunsthaus Zurich (which houses the controversial Bührle collection), Franciska Vandepitte, senior curator of modern art at the Royal Museums for Fine Art, Geert Sels, journalist at De Standaard, who recently published a valued book on the subject under the title "Kunst voor Das Reich" and "Le trésor de guerre des nazis" (English version to be published soon), and Kim Oosterlinck, director of the Royal Museums for Fine Art, and who devoted several publications to this issue. The event will be introduced and moderated by Michel Flamée, who devoted on the internet at Lootedart.com an extensive study to these issues.
The session will be in English, Dutch and French, at the speaker's choice, however without simultaneous translation.
After the Q&A follows the usual reception.
Participation
35 € p.p. for members of the Club of the University Foundation and theit partner,
45 € p.p. for non-members.
The speakers
Ann Demeester, born in 1975 in Bruges, Belgium, has been director of the Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland's largest art museum, since October 2022.
From 2014 to February 2022, she was director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, a museum for old masters, modern and contemporary art.
Prior to that, she spent eight years at the helm of the de Appel Arts Centre, an exhibition centre for contemporary art and performance in Amsterdam, known for its curatorial training programmes.
Ann Demeester studied literature and linguistics (English/Dutch/Norwegian) and worked as an art critic for national newspapers.
She was assistant to Jan Hoet and curator of the Belgian Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent (SMAK) and the Deutsches Museum MARTa Herford.
Ann Demeester was co-curator of the Tirana Biennial in 2003 and organised exhibitions with artists such as Salla Tykka, Zarina Bhimji, Mika Rottenberg, Nina Yuen, Bjarne Melgaard, Luc Tuymans and Michael Borremans. In 2009, she was curator of the Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, together with Kestutis Kuizinas.
Until 2022, Ann Demeester held the chair of art and culture at Radboud University Nijmegen. Her teaching activities focused on the concept of the “Transhistorical Museum”, a museum in which artworks, objects and ideas from different eras and periods enter into dialogue with each other.
Francisca Vandepitte (born 1966) obtained a PhD in Art History from Ghent University (1996). She is senior curator of Modern Art & Magritte Museum at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels and head of the restoration department for modern and contemporary art. Since 2015, she has also been a lecturer in conservation studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). As an author, she focuses on 20th-century Belgian art and technical art history.
As the person responsible for the painting collection (1900-1968), she was in charge of the focus exhibition “Beroving” (Robbery) in the cycle “Onze verzameling in vraag” (Our collection in question), KMSKB, 10.02.2022-30.08.2023, an initiative in the context of the restitution of the painting Bloemen (Flowers) by Lovis Corinth.
Geert Sels (1965) is a Germanist and theatre scholar (KU Leuven). He worked as a journalist for VRT and De Morgen, and has been culture editor at De Standaard since 1996. He wrote extensively about theatre. In 2005, he published the book “Accidenten van een zaalwachter” (Accidents of an usher), a monograph about theatre director Luk Perceval. He now writes about architecture, cultural policy, art forgery and looted art.
In 2014, he received the De Loep award for investigative journalism for a series of articles on looted art. This was followed in 2016 by a series of articles about paintings that disappeared from Belgium during the war and are still abroad. In 2017, he wrote the special issue “Kunst voor Das Reich” (Art for the Reich) for the magazine Openbaar Kunstbezit Vlaanderen, in which he pointed out that not all war art in Belgian museums has a conclusive provenance. At the end of 2022, his book “Kunst voor das Reich” (Art for the Reich) was published, the result of eight years of research, which has since been translated into French under the title “Le trésor de guerre des Nazis” (The Nazis' War Treasure).
Kim Oosterlinck is the General Director of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and a professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles. His work on art focuses, among other things, on the impact of discoveries of forgeries on the art market, the reactions of the art market during monetary reforms, the commercial strategy of art dealers, the motivations of banks to create collections, art expertise, and the functioning of the Salon jury in the 19th century. Kim Oosterlinck has also developed expertise on the art market in times of war and published several articles on the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and German art markets during World War II.
Prof. Dr. Em. Michel Flamée built an eclectic career. In addition to a constant part-time research and teaching assignment at VUB and ULB, he gained extensive practical experience, both local, European and international, as a barrister, magistrate, supervisor in the financial sector and later member and chairman of boards of directors of insurance companies. His interest in Looted Art, about which he also published, is related to the choice of the field in which he received his doctorate, that was rewarded with the Fernand Collin Prize, i.e. intellectual and industrial property. He guided four FUUS trips through Prague, Vienna, Berlin and Sils-Maria. The latter concluded with a visit to the Kunsthaus Zürich. This study evening can be seen as further building on this.