Lost and Found, a series of oil paintings by Ronald Katz, is a visually arresting meditation on cultural and ecological fragility throughout history. Each painting serves as both memorial and mirror: resurrecting masterpieces lost to war and theft alongside species vanished by human hands, while implicating  our complicity in this cycle of destruction.

The paintings reflect three distinct forms of loss. The first is cultural vandalism, represented by works from Rubens, Courbet, Van Gogh, and Vermeer that were destroyed or stolen—testaments to the fragility of artistic legacy in the face of war and theft. The second is biological extinction, with animals such as the European lion, Passenger Pigeon, and Black Rhinoceros depicted in the reverent style of the Old Masters, honoring creatures erased by human impact. The third is a contemporary crisis, captured through urgent portrayals of currently endangered species like the Miami Blue butterfly, highlighting the ongoing threat to biodiversity in our time.

These juxtapositions are deliberate acts of visual drama. For example, in Lost and  Found #3, a Matisse once plundered by Nazis shares space with several species of songbirds and a triple portrait of Debussy, symbolizing the ephemeral nature of music, art and life forms, and in Lost and Found #2  Beethoven’s likeness appears beside a Painted Bunting and a poisonous dart frog— forms of sublime beauty, the first encapsulating great cultural achievement in music, sculpture and painting,  the other two representative of rare and endangered masterpieces of nature.

In an era of climate denial and cultural pillaging (from looted museums to melting glaciers), Lost and Found reframes art as an ethical act. The exhibition’s traditional hanging style—each work given sacred space—echoes museum memorials, while wall texts transform viewers into witnesses. This is not nostalgia; it’s forensic accounting of what we’ve sacrificed to destructive human activity. While these paintings demand art historical literacy, they reward any viewer with their emotional resonance. A teenager may not recognize Courbet’s Stone Breakers (destroyed in Dresden’s bombing), but they’ll feel the grief in its ghostly rendering alongside lost species. This generational bridge makes the exhibition both scholarly and visceral—a rarity in contemporary art.

 

These works are visual drama. Providing comparable consideration of a stolen Vermeer and extinct and endangered sea creatures, Lost and Found suggests the interconnectedness of cultural and environmental preservation. Referencing rediscovered cave paintings depicting animals, by our distant ancestors illustrates the continuity of human expression through art. These works ignite consideration of our fragile natural and cultural environment while providing a heightened aesthetic experience.