London
The first global registry of artworks looted during World War II is being set up by a Washington company. Trans-Art International has already logged 34,000 items and says the total may eventually exceed 250,000.
Two-thirds of the works on the company's Historic Art Theft Registry are paintings and the remainder are sculptures, prints, drawings, manuscripts and books. Most of the losses are recorded from Germany (10,000), Hungary (9,000) and France (8,000), with much smaller numbers from Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Austria, Poland, the Ukraine and Belarus. Trans-Art's managing director Lloyd Goldenberg says that Russian losses have not yet been registered “because insufficient information has been provided to identify the missing works”.
War-loss victims will normally be charged a $50 fee for recording an artwork, but Trans-Art says that this just covers its costs and the company does not want to profit from those who suffered from looting. Trans-Art intends to make its money by issuing certificates to those who want to verify that an item they own or want to acquire is not registered as having been looted. In the event of any future legal claim, this could be important in demonstrating that they exercised “due diligence”, a particularly important consideration under American law (see pp. 6-7).
The charge for going through the extensive checks to determine that an item has not been recorded as having been looted, and then issuing a certificate, will probably be about $2,000 a work. This service is to be launched later this month. Trans-Art's directors include German lawyer and researcher Dr Willi Korte and its consultants are Trace magazine's Philip Saunders and former FBI special agent Robert Spiel Jr.
Trans-Art can be contacted at 1511 K St NW, Suite 1100, Washington DC 20005.
Originally appeared in the Art Newspaper as 'Put your war losses on computer'