Recoveries

Arts Council England has appointed the Institute of Art and Law to help form new guidance for institutions around the thorny issues of restitution and repatriation of cultural objects.

A Japanese museum has claimed it bought a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds “in good faith and without fault from a respectable art dealer” after it was identified as being stolen from a UK stately home.

The FBI’s art crime team and auction house Christie’s have returned a pair of Louis XVI bronze vases that were stolen by the Nazis to the heirs of the original Jewish owners.

Six-hundred rare books, manuscripts and prints which were lost or stolen from a German library during the Second World War have been returned after they were consigned to Sotheby’s.

A Pablo Picasso painting missing for nearly 20 years has been recovered by the so-called real-life ‘Indiana Jones’ of the art world.

A cathedral in Germany has returned a painting that was seized by the Nazis in 1941 to the heirs of its original Jewish owners. The work had entered the collection of Adolf Hitler’s photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and was found among the numerous works he kept in a castle in Bavaria at the end of the Second World War.

A group of eight antiquities that was consigned to Christie’s has been returned to Italy after the works were identified as not having the necessary export and provenance details to be sold.

High-profile London book dealers Peter Harrington and Maggs Bros have been left out of pocket after an alleged $8m rare books theft from Carnegie Library in the US.

A coin and antiquities dealer has been arrested as part of an international investigation into a £35m crime network dealing in looted artefacts.

An Old Master portrait missing for nearly 80 years has been returned to the heirs of Dutch banker and art collector Fritz Gutmann. They now plan to auction the picture with an estimate of $1m-2m.

A $160m (£136m) masterpiece by Dutch-American abstract-impressionist painter Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) that had been stolen from a US museum 30 years ago has been discovered in an antiques shop.

A first edition of AA Milne’s 'Now we are Six' that disappeared nearly a year ago has been returned to its dealers.

A masonic ceremonial sword which disappeared in a car theft has been recovered after emerging at a London auction house.

Art Recovery Group, founded by Chris Marinello three years ago as a rival to long-established The Art Loss Register, has split the firm to create a not-for-profit organisation called Artive.

A rare American stamp stolen in 1955 in one of the most famous thefts in philatelic history has been recovered after turning up at Spink.