The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim in New York, the Getty in Los Angeles and Chicago’s Institute of Art are just four of the major institutions that made details of their collections available to the site which has been set up by the American Association of Museums.
So far they have catalogued more than 6000 artefacts that changed hands in Continental Europe during the Nazi era.
Somewhere between five and ten per cent of the estimated 1.5 million pieces of art stolen by the Nazis are still missing.
The site, which offers both quick and advanced searches, will have international links to other similar databases.The site can be found at: www.nepip.org
US website to track Nazi looted art
THE United States has taken a lead in art restitution by setting up a website to track Nazi-looted art. The Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal which has just gone online, will provide a database of museums collections – 70 have signed up so far – for checks on art that disappeared in Europe between 1933 and 1945.
