The 2014 George Clooney explored a group of American and British men and women – museum curators, art historians, librarians, architects, even artists – responsible for preserving the artistic and cultural achievements of western civilization from the destruction of war and theft by the Nazis.

A number of those works are now on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum in the exhibition Politics and the Monuments Men: The Berlin Masterpieces in America. Peter Jonathan Bell, the Musuem’s curator of European paintings, sculpture and drawings, offers us an inside look at the exhibition and the stories behind preserving these masterpieces.