Art: First & Last Look

It was the biggest & best collection of borrowed art since the loot Napoleon had brought home to the Louvre from his conquering sweep of Europe. And it was even better guarded. In Washington's National Gallery, blue-coated guards in reinforced numbers paced the corridors. Military policemen stood in every room. But the 202 paintings they were guarding (estimated value: $80,000,000) were not loot, though they too had been brought back by conquerors (TIME, Feb. 11, 1946). All but two—a Daumier and a Manet—had once hung on the walls of Berlin's Kaiser Friedrich Museum....

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