Dallas’ own Robert Edsel is the founder of the internationally acclaimed Monuments Men and Women Foundation, which has dedicated itself to uncovering and rescuing art plundered by the Nazis during World War II.
A tennis star at St. Mark’s School of Texas and Southern Methodist University, Edsel, now 66, left behind a lucrative career in the oil and gas industry to surrender himself to the cause, which has led to four books and the Hollywood movie The Monuments Men starring George Clooney and Matt Damon.
And now, a new chapter has taken him to New Orleans, where on Friday he will observe the dedication of the final building of the $400 million campus of the National WWII Museum, known as the Liberation Pavilion, which, in part, showcases the work of those who rescued the art.
Edsel calls it an enormous honor for his organization to be included in the pavilion, noting however, “We are a part of a much bigger picture. Three floors of exhibits, and the Monuments Men and Women is just a part of all of that. It’s an important part, but still a part.”
Museum officials say a 2004 capital campaign “enabled the museum to quadruple the size of its campus and to grow its collections, endowment and educational programs,” of which the Liberation Pavilion is a memorable, striking component.
In lofty language found on its website, the Dallas-based foundation honors those whose “unprecedented and heroic work protecting and safeguarding civilization’s most important artistic and cultural treasures from armed conflict” has become its formidable raison d’être.
In the movie version of the story, Clooney and Damon play men in an unlikely World War II platoon tasked with rescuing masterpieces from German thieves and returning them to their owners. After the war, the effort extended to American and British men and women including curators, art historians, librarians, architects and artists.
The Liberation Pavilion is merely the latest phase in Edsel’s odyssey, which began in Florence, Italy, in 1996, when he developed a passion for art and architecture that led to a driven curiosity about monuments and esteemed artworks.
In 2014, that led to his receiving the highest honor given by the Foundation for the National Archives. Past recipients include director Steven Spielberg, actor Tom Hanks, documentarian Ken Burns, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough and legendary news anchor Tom Brokaw.
For Edsel, the Liberation Pavilion allows visitors to the National WWII Museum to undergo an emotional hands-on experience, to help them understand, “What was the experience of the Monuments Men and Women going into salt mines and caves and finding hundreds of thousands of works of art that the Nazis had stolen?”
Museum literature explains that the Liberation Pavilion covers the end of World War II, the Holocaust, the postwar years and “how the war continues to impact our lives today.” It is described as a three-story pavilion, featuring first-person accounts, “iconic imagery, powerful artifacts and immersive environments.”
In the fullness of its presentation, its storytelling extends even to an Anne Frank exhibit, which has reconstructed a portion of the so-called secret annex of the Amsterdam building in which she and seven others remained in hiding for two years until they were captured by the Nazis barely nine months before the German surrender.
Among the range of exhibits is the facsimile of a salt mine, where, as the Hollywood film so dramatically shows, Allied soldiers found hundreds of thousands of rare objects plundered and hidden by the Nazis, who had spent years stealing such treasures from scores of Jewish families, many of whom died in the Holocaust.
The pavilion also includes a theater in the round devoted to a film that chronicles “what World War II was all about,” Edsel says, “and how it changed our country forever.”
And, of course, it includes “artifacts that families donated to us over the years — uniforms, objects looted by the Nazis. The most exciting part of the exhibit for us is Whereabouts Unknown. We offer a QR code that prompts visitors, leaving them with a request: If you have any works of art or cultural objects brought to the country by a soldier, by an immigrant or a displaced person, take photos of it and send a description, which will give the foundation even more leads and help us write the final chapter of World War II.”
The National WWII Museum actually began in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum, but in 2004, largely through the bipartisan backing of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) — both World War II combat veterans — the museum changed names and in so doing dramatically broadened its focus.
“It’s incredible,” Edsel says of the museum at 945 Magazine St., where he served as a board member from 2009 to 2016, during which he was asked: “What is your best idea? And I told them we should build a permanent exhibition for the Monuments Men and Women. We ought to create a salt mine and embed the educational components.”
So, during the past 18 to 24 months, “We’ve spent a huge amount of time with our small staff. We wrote the storyboards and selected the photographs. We helped them curate which artifacts should be put on display. Just trying to make sure that everybody who was involved in the story with the Monuments Men to the Monuments Women, to each nation involved, that there was some representation there, of everybody, in the limited space that we had.”
The pavilion was funded by private donors and the state of Louisiana, the museum says. Edsel says the museum is a story in itself. It has, in its short history, overcome the staggering effects of both Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19, “which has been, like a war, in a way, overcoming obstacles that were much bigger than anyone could have possibly envisioned. And yet, they’ve survived, and it’s a terrific museum that everyone should see.”
Younger generations grow up, and, he says, “know nothing about such films as Saving Private Ryan or The Monuments Men, but a museum — this museum — should be there forever, telling them stories they so need to hear.”