German Lost Art Foundation approves approx. €1.6 million for 21 provenance research projects

For the first time, an ap­pli­ca­tion from a pri­vate in­di­vid­u­al for prove­nance re­search fund­ing has been ac­cept­ed.

In the sec­ond ap­pli­ca­tion round of 2017 (dead­line: Oc­to­ber 1) the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board ap­proved 21 ap­pli­ca­tions from mu­se­ums, li­braries, aca­dem­ic in­sti­tu­tions, archives and one pri­vate in­di­vid­u­al. Four­teen ap­pli­ca­tions are sub­ject to the ful­fill­ment of ad­di­tion­al con­di­tions. In do­ing so, the Board has fol­lowed the cor­re­spond­ing rec­om­men­da­tions from the Foun­da­tion’s Fund­ing Com­mit­tee and has pro­vid­ed to­tal fund­ing of around €4 mil­lion in 2017 so far to sup­port lo­cal­ly based search­es for cul­tur­al goods seized as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion. This equates to the vol­ume of fund­ing of pre­vi­ous years.

“For the first time, an ap­pli­ca­tion from a pri­vate in­di­vid­u­al for prove­nance re­search fund­ing has been ac­cept­ed,” ex­plains Gilbert Lupfer, Ex­ec­u­tive Board mem­ber at the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion. “In this case, sup­port will be pro­vid­ed to the heirs for re­search pur­pos­es as they re­con­struct an art col­lec­tion that was sold at forced auc­tions. This is an im­por­tant new step in the de­vel­op­ment of fund­ing for pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als.”

An overview of the ap­proved projects can be found in the an­nex.

Since the Fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments be­gan sup­port­ing prove­nance re­search projects in 2008, the in­sti­tu­tions fund­ed to date have re­ceived around €23.75 mil­lion. A to­tal of 268 projects (185 long-term and 83 short-term) have been im­ple­ment­ed at these in­sti­tu­tions.

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion is the cen­tral con­tact part­ner, na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, for all mat­ters per­tain­ing to the un­law­ful seizure of cul­tur­al as­sets in Ger­many in the 20th cen­tu­ry. It sup­ports prove­nance re­search by pro­vid­ing re­search grants, and al­so doc­u­ments lost cul­tur­al items as search re­quests and found-ob­ject re­ports in its pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble Lost Art Database.