Restitution

Restitution Report: museum directors respond

The French academics Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr urge President Macron to return African artefacts. But does the report go too far, or not far enough?

TRISTRAM HUNT, HARTMUT DORGERLOH and NICHOLAS THOMAS

French President Emmanuel Macron calls for international conference on the return of African artefacts

Announcement comes after controversial report urged the president to return works taken “without consent” in the colonial period

'Give Africa its art back', Macron's report says

A new report on the status of African objects in French museums will urge the president to return works taken “without consent” in the colonial period

Dusseldorf auction house returns Dutch seascape to heirs of Jewish art dealer Max Stern

Auctioneer Frank Hargesheimer compensates consignor, sees “moral duty” to restitute art lost due to Nazi persecution

Austria returns wrong Klimt to wrong family

Painting of apple trees is pulled from exhibition after admission that its restitution was a mistake

Sotheby’s to auction Kirchner and Kokoschka paintings returned to Jewish dealer’s heirs

The paintings restituted to family of Alfred Flechtheim carry top estimates of $20m each

President Rouhani personally takes looted ancient relief back from New York to Tehran

Piece depicting a Persian soldier was seized last year at Tefaf New York

Looted artinterview

Meet the amateur art sleuth who is helping India recover its stolen antiques

Shipping company executive S. Vijay Kumar was responsible for recovering a Buddha stolen from India 57 years ago among many other looted works

Guggenheim to return Kirchner painting to heirs of Jewish dealer

The original owner, Alfred Flechtheim, fled the Nazis in 1933 after a stream of anti-Semitic attacks

Lawnews

Paris court orders US collector to turn over Pissarro painting

The work, seized by the pro-Nazi Vichy government, had been lent to an exhibition at the Musée Marmottan

Swedish museums call for panel to advise on Nazi-loot claims

“It shouldn’t be entirely up to us,” says Daniel Birnbaum, the director of Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, which recently restituted a Kokoschka painting

How two missing legs helped the restitution of an Italian secrétaire worth €2m

The Italian state has a permanent right to confiscate illegally exported work

Looted Renoir is returned to French heir in New York

Granddaughter of Jewish collector flies in for restitution ceremony

Sweden's Moderna Museet returns Kokoschka work to Jewish dealer's heirs

The 1910 portrait of a marquis was sold by Alfred Flechtheim’s employee after the dealer fled Nazi Germany

Goudstikker heir files petition for rare rehearing of Cranach claim

Marei von Saher asks an appeals court in California to reconsider her case against the Norton Simon Museum

Booksreview

The tortuous story of Gustav Klimt’s Nazi-looted, 100ft-wide Beethoven Frieze uncovered

New book exploring work's provenance is a must-read for those interested in the contentious field of art restitution

Timeline: the legal battle over Cranach’s Adam and Eve

The events that led up to the ruling in favour of the Norton Simon Museum after it was sued by the heir of Dutch dealer Jacques Goudstikker over ownership of the paintings

Lawnews

Norton Simon Museum can keep Nazi-looted Cranachs, US court rules

Decision should put decade-long legal battle between museum and heirs of art dealer Jacques Goudstikker "to rest"

Lawnews

Legal battle over Met's famous Picasso reignited by estate

The museum stands by its ownership of The Actor, which it says was never in the hands of Nazis

German museum returns tattooed Maori skull to New Zealand

The preserved head was held in Cologne's Rautenstrauch Joest Museum of world cultures for 110 years

Lawnews

Claim on Guelph Treasure can go to trial in US federal court

Lawyers for the Prussian Cultural Foundation argued that it was not “genocide” when the objects were sold in 1935

Returning looted African art is as urgent as giving back works stolen by the Nazis

Congolese-born art collector Sindika Dokolo says this "long-neglected historical wrong" is finally being addressed—but more can be done

Ethiopia claims Ten Commandments tablet hidden in Westminster Abbey

Sacred object taken by British troops in the 19th century is concealed inside an altar

Lawnews

Art dealer sues Poland over its failed efforts to extradite him from the US

After offering to return a work looted by the Nazis in exchange for his family’s former real estate, Khochinsky was placed under house arrest in New York and faced a 10-year prison sentence in Poland

Contested Asante trophy head to shine in new Wallace room

Seized during the Ashanti war and long held by the London museum, the prized Ghanaian work is to be displayed in a new permanent gallery

Lawnews

Getty says it will appeal Italian court order to return Victorious Youth

An Italian judge has found that the work was discovered in Italian water, despite decades of rulings to the contrary

Lawnews

New York judge orders two Schiele works sent to Christie’s, where they could be auctioned

But the watercolours are currently at the centre of a closely watched restitution lawsuit

Collector appeals for return of Pissarro painting restituted through a 1945 order made by the Allies in France

"This may raise many important Holocaust issues for the French market," Christie’s says

Angola recovers six artefacts looted from museum during civil war

Dundo Museum's lost objects were traced by the Sindika Dokolo Foundation