The Rape of Europa

You’ve seen this image before. Of course you have — if nothing else, at
least a cheap print in a college dorm. Gustav Klimt’s Gold
Portrait, stolen from Viennese Jews in 1938, is now the most expensive
painting ever sold — and the opening subject of The Rape of Europa,
an "epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction, and
miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during World War II."
Have you heard of the Venus Fixers, the Monument Men, the Roberts Commission, the MFAA? They were essentially a pared down Secret Service
of the art world through the 1940s — young museum directors, curators,
art professors, and architects who volunteered to protect Europe’s
strong artistic cultural history by policing looting, theft,
destruction, and artistic loss of any kind. Written, produced, and directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham, and Bonni Cohen, The Rape of Europa
maps out Europe’s artistic loss at the hands of the Nazis over the
course of twelve years — the most savage theft and destruction of art
to date.

Opens Friday, May 30th at Landmark’s Edina Cinema, 3911 West 50th St., Edina.