Russian will review art sales

The Russian government has set up a commission to review the legality of the Soviet Union’s sale of artworks from the country’s museums before World War II, the director of the State Hermitage Museum said Monday.

Of the hundreds of paintings sold from the Hermitage Museum in the late 1920s and early 1930s, about 20 of them eventually went to help create the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.