A group dedicated to finishing the work of World War II's Monuments Men is betting on a deck of playing cards—and reward money—to help find missing works of art taken by the Nazis. Inspired by the US military's history of creating playing cards related to missions, the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art created the deck focusing on works—including paintings, sculptures and reliquaries—they believe still exist, per the AP. "What is needed is to raise awareness about what is missing," said Anna Bottinelli, the foundation's president. "Because you might know of a friend who has a beautiful painting on the wall and you don’t even question that that painting belongs to someone else."
The group, which is offering rewards of up to $25,000 for information leading to the recovery of each cultural object featured in the deck, will highlight a few of the cards each week on their social media. Bottinelli said the foundation worked with museums, law enforcement, and owners of lost art as they narrowed down which works to feature, which include those by Vincent van Gogh, Caravaggio, and Claude Monet. One, a pastel by Edgar Degas titled "Portrait of Mlle. Gabrielle Diot" that was taken by the Nazis from a home in France in 1940, is known to have been sold in the mid-1970s to an unknown Swiss collector. "Many of these have resurfaced in the recent past—even as late as 2008—in auctions," Bottinelli said.
The $14.95 deck being sold through the foundation is a nod to a US military tradition that includes a deck featuring the most-wanted fugitives from the Iraq War and one from WWII designed to help soldiers identify aircraft. In addition to the 52 works of art in the deck, two cards—the jokers—feature a set of Nazi photo albums of artwork that have missing volumes. There's reason to hope someone might come across one: The foundation has already found five that had been brought home by US soldiers after the war as souvenirs. The foundation, started in 2007, honors the Monuments Men, a group of men and women who served during WWII to protect cultural treasures as battles waged, and after the war helped return artwork plundered by the Nazis to the rightful owners.
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