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