[MSN] CLAIMS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES THAT UNCLAIMED LOOTED ART IN AUSTRIAN MUSEUMS NOW LISTED ONLINE

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

CLAIMS CONFERENCE ANNOUNCES THAT UNCLAIMED LOOTED ART IN AUSTRIAN MUSEUMS
NOW LISTED ONLINE 



The Claims Conference announced that an initial list
http://www.juedische.at/TCgi/_v2/TCgi.cgi?target=home&Param_Kat=3&Param_RB=2
&Param_Red=6686

of art objects likely looted during the Nazi era and now in Austrian museums
and public collections are now listed in an online searchabledatabase,
enabling victims of Nazism and their heirs to search more easily for
artworks stolen during the Holocaust.
  

The Claims Conference has been working for several decades in pressing
Austria on the issue of Nazi-era looted art, as well as on other Holocaust
restitution and compensation issues. The database was established by the
Austrian National Fund, a state institution that distributes restitution
payments to Austrian Jewish victims of Nazism
and that was created as a result of negotiations with the Claims Conference
in the 1990s.

The German version of The Art Database of the National Fund of the Republic
of Austria is at http://www.kunstrestitution.at. The English version
of the database will be online in spring 2007. 

"The establishment of this website is an important step in the effort to
restitute looted artwork and bring justice to families long deprived of
their rightful possessions," said Gideon Taylor, Claims Conference Executive
Vice President.

The art database contains information on 7,500 objects of art and on objects
of cultural value that are located today in museums and in collections of
the Republic of Austria or of the City of Vienna and which, according to
current provenance research, are likely to have been
expropriated during the Nazi era. Every object is listed with information
regarding its restitution status.

It is expected that information on additional items of looted art in Austria
will become available in the future. The database will be continuously
expanded as museums provide more information on their holdings to the
National Fund.

On the website, the National Fund announced the following concerning
unclaimed objects:

"According to Austrian law, works of art, which were looted under National
Socialism in Austria, shall be returned to the original owners or to their
legal successors. It is a statutory task of the National
Fund to sell those objects of which no rightful owner can be found and to
distribute the proceeds to victims of the National Socialist regime.

Before the actual sale of the objects, the National Fund offers the
possibility to identify restitutable art-objects by providing an art
database in the internet." 

Twenty years ago, following efforts by the Claims Conference, the Austrian
government returned looted artwork that had been stored in a monastery in
Mauerbach, near Vienna. 

The Claims Conference and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO)
have begun a comprehensive program toward the restitution of Jewish-owned
art and cultural property lost and plundered during the Holocaust. Recently,
a survey was completed of U.S. museums concerning
their progress in provenance research, and underway is a digitization and
publication of the records of the main Nazi organization responsible for
pilfering and collecting art during the Holocaust. Information regarding
restitution of art, including a list of searchable databases of potentially
looted art, is at http://www.claimscon.org/art.