[MSN] Website aims to get Nazi-looted art back to owners

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Website aims to get Nazi-looted art back to owners
Last Updated Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:24:28 EDT
CBC Arts 
A new website aims to reunite Holocaust survivors or their heirs with art
looted by the Nazis.

Swift-Find, an online registry of valuables, has created a database where
families who have lost art can post information, and auction houses or
museums that question the provenance of a work can check it out.

Its Looted Art Project is led by Shauna Isaac, who has worked with
governments and agencies to create a database of looted art.

When the Nazis controlled Europe, they looted cultural objects from every
country they occupied.

The Allies collected plundered works in Munich after the war and returned
most artworks to the country of origin of the artist. Many countries placed
unclaimed works into museums.

The Swift-Find website estimates as many as 100,000 objects may not yet have
been returned to their rightful owners.

Suspicion that work might be looted is still affecting art markets today. In
the past year, Austria has had to return five Klimts to the American heirs
of a Jewish art dealer and Britain has agreed to compensate a Czech family
for art that made its way into the British Museum.

U.K.-based firm Swift-Find worked with Sotheby's Auction House, which itself
has a formal archive of looted war art, to create the website.

The project has an archive of works that contains 25,000 pieces that have
yet to be recovered by their rightful owners.

Claimants are invited to register works they might be searching for.
Museums, galleries, dealers and collectors have been invited to browse the
site to check that works they are acquiring are not listed.   

http://www.cbc.ca/