The CJM

Join the artists behind the exhibition Looted for a conversation about the inspiration behind their project and the powerful symbolic gesture depicted in the installation. Moderated by Senior Curator Heidi Rabben, the artists will offer insights into the relationship between art, memory, politics, and loss.

Looted is a multimedia installation that reflects on the history of Polish-owned paintings stolen during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Initiated by Polish artist Dorota Mytych and created with painting collaborators Tracy Grubbs (San Francisco), Jessica Houston (Canada), and Marcia Teusink (UK), the installation features the four artists jointly recreating a total of fifty-nine looted artworks based on documentation from the Polish government catalogue of wartime losses. Watching this mesmerizing process comes with an unexpected conclusion: before each canvas can dry, the artists wipe away their own painstaking work in a stunning erasure that challenges the meaning of authorship, ownership, and recovery. Paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, and others are infinitely recreated and erased, offering new ways to process the impact of these stolen works and experience art as a means for resilience.

Come earlier in the day to attend a painting workshop led by the artists, where you can create your own reproduction of a looted artwork.

Click below to book tickets for this event. To register for the painting workshop (separate registration required), click here.

Dorota Mytych is a Polish artist who challenges grand narratives, examining their political, social, and personal foundations. Growing up in communist Poland fuels her interest in the evolution, transformation, and dissolution of these systems. She invites viewers to reconsider established historical narratives through painting, video, sculpture, and installation. Exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney; Arts Centre, Melbourne; Ethnography Museum, Cracow. Her works are in collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Artbank Collection; and Victoria Legal Aid Collection, Australia.

Tracy Grubbs is a San Francisco-based artist who uses painting, drawing, and movement to explore impermanence and interconnection, often evoking the liminal space between self and other. Exhibitions include The Headlands Center for the Arts, the Morris Graves Museum of Art, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Marin MOCA. In 2022, she was nominated for the SECA Artist Award sponsored by SFMOMA. In 2024, she received an artist’s grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Jessica Houston is a Montréal-based artist who uses painting, photography, and video to focus on climate justice in the polar regions. Collaborating with poets, scientists, and philosophers, she reveals geographies of resistance in the Canadian Arctic and Antarctica. Exhibitions include Vanderbilt University Museum of Art, USA; Museo de Arts de Querétaro, Mexico; CREA Gallery, Venice; and Montréal Museum of Fine Arts. Her works are in the collections of the Musée National Des Beaux-Arts du Quebec, Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, The Consulate General of Monaco, and the Canada Council Art Bank.

Marcia Teusink is a London-based artist whose practice examines the historic movement of plants and its unintended consequences. She addresses these through painting, video, sculpture, and installation. Teusink has exhibited extensively in the UK and Europe, including recent solo exhibitions at Rome Botanical Gardens, Italy, and Od Arts Festival, Somerset, UK, and shows at Sluice’s Territory Expo, Barreiro, PT, Unit 1 Gallery, London, UK, St. Bartholomew the Great, London, UK, and others.

Looted

This multimedia installation features the four artists jointly recreating a total of fifty-nine paintings looted during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Watching this mesmerizing process comes with an unexpected conclusion: before each canvas can dry, the artists wipe away their own painstaking work in a stunning erasure that challenges the meaning of authorship, ownership, and recovery. Paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, and others are infinitely recreated and erased, offering new ways to process the impact of these stolen works and experience art as a means for resilience.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum is supported in part by a grant from Grants for the Arts.

Support for Looted is provided in part by the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Artist Talk: Looted

Looted