Charles Parkhurst, Who Tracked Down Looted Art, Dies at 95
Charles Parkhurst, a museum director in Baltimore and Washington and one of the “monuments men,” an Allied Forces team that chased down leads, pried open crates and snooped around museums, salt mines and castles in search of art stolen by the Nazis during World War II, died on Thursday at his home in Amherst, Mass. He was 95.
The death was confirmed by his wife, Carol Clark. As a lieutenant in the Navy and a trained art historian, Mr. Parkhurst was deputy chief of Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives in Germany immediately after the war. The team, which was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1943 and widely known as the Roberts Commission, after its chairman, Justice Owen J. Roberts of the Supreme Court, attracted an international group of young museum directors and curators, art professors and architects. Known as the “monuments men,” their mission was to identify art works and buildings in need of protection and to ferret out caches of stolen art.
Beginning in the last year of the war, the group found and returned more than five million artifacts and art works to their rightful owners.
Mr. Parkhurst and a team of more than 30 investigators, operating from the former national headquarters of the Nazi Party in Munich, ultimately identified 1,056 repositories of looted art.
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The death was confirmed by his wife, Carol Clark. As a lieutenant in the Navy and a trained art historian, Mr. Parkhurst was deputy chief of Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives in Germany immediately after the war. The team, which was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1943 and widely known as the Roberts Commission, after its chairman, Justice Owen J. Roberts of the Supreme Court, attracted an international group of young museum directors and curators, art professors and architects. Known as the “monuments men,” their mission was to identify art works and buildings in need of protection and to ferret out caches of stolen art.
Beginning in the last year of the war, the group found and returned more than five million artifacts and art works to their rightful owners.
Mr. Parkhurst and a team of more than 30 investigators, operating from the former national headquarters of the Nazi Party in Munich, ultimately identified 1,056 repositories of looted art.