Gerald Van der Kemp, the French art expert who masterminded the restoration of Louis XIV's palace at Versailles and saved the ''Mona Lisa'' from destruction by the Nazis, died Dec. 28 in Paris. He was 89.
In the 35 years that he was in charge of Versailles, Mr. Van der Kemp devoted himself to returning its principal galleries, apartments and rooms to the way they looked in the 17th and 18th centuries, after many years of neglect by a nation ambiguous in its attitude toward symbols of royalty.
With the encouragement of President Charles de Gaulle and his culture Minister, the writer André Malraux, Mr. Van der Kemp scoured the world for treasures sold after the French Revolution and assembled an army of master craftsmen -- carvers, plasterers, gilders, silversmiths, seamstresses -- to repair or recreate the palace's lost splendors.
But probably his most important contribution to that task was to mobilize another kind of army, an army of the rich, to supplement the French government's modest financial contribution. He set up the Versailles Foundation in New York City with his second wife, Florence Harris, an American, who survives him. He is also survived by his son, Frank, from a first marriage, which ended in divorce.
Most of those who funneled money into the reconstruction of Versailles were Americans, including two generations of Rockefellers, Barbara Hutton, Estée Lauder and the Wildenstein family of art dealers. Funds also came from European and other benefactors, including the French branch of the Rothschild family, Pierre David-Weil of Lazard Frere, the investment bank, the Aga Khan and Arturo Lopez-Wilshaw, a rich Argentine.
In all about three quarters of the money being spent on restoring Versailles, a task that continues, has come from private donations.
In 1977 the Institut de France asked Mr. Van der Kemp to restore Monet's badly run-down house and garden at Giverny, about 50 miles outside Paris, which it owned. Monet did his waterlily studies there from 1883 to 1926.
Once again Mr. Van der Kemp turned to private benefactors for financial help, expanding the Versailles Foundation to include Giverny. And when the renovated pink farmhouse, with its yellow dining room, blue kitchen, flower-filled gardens and lily pond, was opened to the public in 1980 about 95 percent of the project's cost had been met by private contributions.
Born May 5, 1912, at Charenton-le-Pont in the Val-de-Marne, into a family of Dutch origin, Mr. Van der Kemp studied at the École du Louvre and the Institute of Arts and Archaeology.
In 1936 he joined the Louvre Museum as an assistant curator, was called up at the start of World War II, was captured but escaped and found his way to the Château de Valencay in southwestern France, where many of the country's greatest artistic treasures had been sent for safe keeping, including Leonardo's ''Mona Lisa,'' which Mr. Van der Kemp often kept in his bedroom.
He had a narrow escape from death when a German commander, apparently seeking revenge for the killing of some of his men by the resistance, threatened to shoot him and burn the building with its treasures.
But Mr. Van der Kemp managed to save his own life, the ''Mona Lisa'' and the other treasures by convincing the officer that Hitler would never forgive him for such an act of cultural barbarism.
