Crimes against Art: Theft & Repatriation Issues  Tags: art crime theft cultural repatriation provenance  

"Art and cultural property crime - which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines -- is a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually." Quote from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Association for Research into Crimes Against Art (ARCA), Based in Italy but international in membership, this non-profit, think tank/research organization studies issues in art crime and cultural property protection, runs educational programs, and consults on art protection and recovery issues brought to them by police, governments, museums, places of worship, and other public institutions.

The Art Loss Register,  A fee-based service for collectors to register their art, to report objects stolen, and to search the database for lost and stolen art works before purchases.  

Houpt, Simon. Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft. New York: Sterling Pub., c2006. Available in the Art & Architecture Library at Call Number N 8795 .H68 2006.

ICOM Red List, Originated in 1997 as a list of African archeological items at risk of being stolen, the list has now expanded to include not only Africa but also Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Peru.  

International Foundation of Art Research (IFAR),  A not-for-profit educational and research organization. A major component of their work concerns itself with art theft and ownership.

Art provenance research refers to learning the history of ownership of an art work from the artist's hand to the current owner. Reconstruction of a complete history of ownership for a given work can be difficult and sometimes impossible since it may require access to archives and sales records not generally open to the public. Documented evidence of provenance for an object can help to establish that it has not been altered and is not a forgery, reproduction, stolen or looted.  

Yeide, Nancy H., Konstantin Akinsha, and Amy L. Walsh. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research. Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, c2001. Available in the Art & Architecture Library at Call Number N 3999 .Y45 2001.

AAMD Objects Registry, Created June 2008, to record new acquisitions by Association of Art Museum Directors members of unprovenanced antiquities and archaeological material. 

Provenance Research, posted by the Getty Research Institute this includes databases and lists of important resources. This is not limited to work in the Getty Museum or to the Holocaust-era.  

Cultural repatriation refers to the return of cultural objects or works of art to their country of origin. It often refers to ancient or tribal objects. 

Cultural Heritage Center, U.S. Dept. of State website that brings together information on International Cultural Property Protection including an image database of items that cannot be imported to the U.S., a searchable database of projects funded by the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, and information regarding the Iraq Cultural Heritage Initiative.

Vrdoljak, Ana Filipa. International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Available in Watson Library Stacks at Call Number K 3791 .V73 2006.

Hitchens, Christopher. The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification. London; New York: Verso, 2008. Available in the Art & Architecture Library at Call Number NB 92 .H58 2008.

Whose culture?: The Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities. Edited by James Cuno. Available in Watson Library Stacks at Call Number AM 7 .W47 2009.

Thousands of art objects were sold, robbed or confiscated during World War II. Survivors and heirs are actively working to regain ownership and art collections around the world are attempting to identify and repatriate any artwork plundered by the Nazis.

Holocaust-Era Assets: A Finding Aid to Records at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland,  A guide to records at the National Archives relating to efforts to identify, recover, and restore assets hidden or stolen by Nazi Germany from Jews and other dispossessed peoples during the Second World War.

Kurtz, Michael J. America and the return of Nazi Contraband: The Recovery of Europe's Cultural Treasures.  Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Available in Watson Library Stacks at Call Number D 818 .K85 2006.

Looted Valuables: Holocaust Assets Collection, Part of the Holocaust website posted by the National Archives and the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal Project, provides a searchable registry of objects in U.S. museum collections that changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era (1933-1945).

Metropolitan Museum of Art's Provenance Research Project, has an emphasis on art work looted by Nazi's that may have been acquired by the museum.

National Gallery of Art World War II Provenance Research, Photos and history for eleven paintings in the collection that were looted during the war.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's Research on Museum Collection Provenance, 1933-45, research on the provenance (history of ownership) of works in its collection during the period 1933 to 1945, that is, from the rise to power of the Nazi party to its defeat.