“When I play tennis, I don’t really care if I win. I want to enjoy the game, I want to exercise, and I want to get better,” James Palmer told me. But when it comes to getting back artwork that’s been stolen, the Toronto-based art detective gets competitive. “When we pursue restitution, we have to win,” he said.
Palmer, who specializes in Nazi-looted work, has been called a “Holocaust hustler” and an “ambulance chaser”; he’s abhorred by European museums, massive banks, and illustrious billionaire art-dealing families. But for his clients—the heirs of families whose property became ill-gotten spoils of World War II—he’s a hero.