This is "the Web extension of the Body Missing project, an inquiry begun in Toronto and Linz, 1994, into the Kunstraub (art theft) policies of the Third Reich, the proposed Fuhrermuseum, and the fate of artworks missing after World War II....
A particular focus of these conversations has been the Sonderauftrag (Special Assignment) Linz, Hitler's little-publicized but systematic plan to acquire art works by any means, including theft and forced sale, for the proposed Fuhrermuseum in Linz, his boyhood home town.
Shipped from all over Europe to the salt mines at nearby Alt Aussee, the brunt of the collection was stored in conditions of perfect archival temperature and humidity, until found by the Allies after the war: cave after cave of paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings destined for the vast museum that was never built.
In the bar the talk continues: About fetishistic art collecting fever and war trophies; about the shifting ground between seeming disappearance of a work and outright loss; about the possibility of reinventing through a kind of cultural memory and fellow-feeling, a connection that opens to an earlier artist and an absent work."
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