Paintings from the Berlin Museums Exhibited in Co-operation with The Department of The Army

Los Angeles was the ninth and penultimate American stop on the Army’s coast-to-coast tour of approximately 200 paintings rescued from the Merkers salt mine. The exhibition ran from January 4 to 22, 1949, and included both Vermeer canvases that had traveled the full circuit: Woman with a Pearl Necklace (cat. no. 138) and The Glass of Wine (cat. no. 139, exhibited under the title “Lady and Gentleman Drinking Wine”). After Los Angeles, the tour moved on to Saint Louis before the paintings were shipped back to Germany in April 1949.

The host institution was the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science, and Art, a combined Beaux Arts museum in Exposition Park that had served the city since 1913. Its art division became the independent Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1961 and relocated to its current Wilshire Boulevard campus in 1965.