{"id":2058873,"date":"2026-07-23T01:32:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2058873"},"modified":"2026-07-23T01:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T22:32:39","slug":"french-museum-launches-wanted-campaign-to-track-down-looted-artworks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2058873","title":{"rendered":"French Museum Launches ‘Wanted’ Campaign to Track Down Looted Artworks"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1080x1350_WANTED.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tHave you seen a middle-aged man sporting an 18th-century, white, powdered wig, a nobleman\u2019s fine clothes, and a gentle, open smile? If so, you may have come upon a certain Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger, a French engraver, designer, and art critic, who worked for King Louis XV and lived from 1715 to 1790.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fact that he is long dead does not preclude him from effectively being a wanted man in France today. Or more accurately, a painting of him by the celebrated French artist Jean Sim\u00e9on Chardin is actively being sought after, after it was plundered from the Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans during the German invasion of the city during World War II.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver 86 years later, the French museum along the banks of the Loire River is trying to get that Chardin back, along with 423 other looted artworks, and has launched a \u201cWanted\u201d poster campaign to help find them, reported Le Monde<\/em>. As part of this clever initiative, the words \u201cWANTED\u201d appear written in yellow, chunky, all caps in American Old Western font, across a host of black-and-white images of the missing paintings on the museum\u2019s social media, website, and other news platforms.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe goal is, on one hand, to make this history known and give a renewed life to these missing paintings, and on the other hand, it is to invite everyone to participate in this search, so that everyone stays alert, and no one can ever again say \u2018we didn\u2019t know,\u2019\u201d said the museum director, Olivia Voisin, in an e-mail to ARTnews<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn June 1940, Nazis attacked the city of Orl\u00e9ans, burning an annex of its fine arts museum, known as the Mus\u00e9e Paul Fourch\u00e9, which, in the chaos of the invading Germans, was almost entirely ransacked, likely by people on both sides of the conflict. Some 350 paintings from Europe, dating as far back as the 16th century, were lost. Other artworks from the museum have disappeared or were stolen at different periods, sometimes from French administrative offices where paintings went on loan.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo date, 424 paintings are still missing from the Orleans museum collection. They include one attributed to Raphael\u2019s Renaissance workshop, an Edouard Manet, art by Italian 15th-century painter Lorenzo Costa, the German Hans Holbein the Younger, and the Flemish 17th-century painter Anthony van Dyck. Asked about their total value, Voisin told ARTnews<\/em> that \u201cthese works are inalienable and imprescriptible, and therefore have no value in themselves, since they cannot be sold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo years ago, Voisin initiated new research efforts to build as complete a catalog as possible of the lost artworks, because no such \u201clist\u201d existed, she explained. \u201cWe needed to provide a tool that could be usable by everyone,\u201d from auctioneers to dealers and other professionals, she said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne might think that, a century later, nothing would be found. And yet, over the past two years, three paintings were returned, each with different stories, showing that attitudes have changed and the moment was right to relaunch a broad search effort,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIndeed, the museum has been trying to raise awareness about the looted art from its collection for years, with relatively little success. The new \u201cWanted\u201d campaign has meant \u201ctalking about it more lightly, taking a sidestep, and it has allowed us to capture public interest so that today people are talking and hearing about it,\u201d she said. She pointed to articles in the French media and the Times of London<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe museum continues to spread the word, with one recent social media post, in which it asks viewers to share a video about their search for the \u201cwanted\u201d paintings: \u201cThere is nothing to gain, but perhaps by seeing it, you\u2019ll recognize an artwork you\u2019d noticed somewhere \u2026 A simple act for the public good and for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1080x1350_WANTED.png?w=1024″] Have you seen a middle-aged man sporting an 18th-century, white, powdered wig, a nobleman\u2019s fine clothes, and a gentle, open smile? If so, you may have come upon a certain Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger, a French engraver, designer, and art critic, who worked for King Louis XV and lived from 1715 to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2058873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2058873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2058873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2058873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2058873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}