Gilbert Lupfer becomes new full-time Executive Board of the German Lost Art Foundation

Art his­to­ri­an Prof. Gilbert Lupfer is tak­ing up a full-time po­si­tion on the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board as of May 15, 2020. Based on a Foun­da­tion Board de­ci­sion, he suc­ceeds Rüdi­ger Hütte, whose pe­ri­od in of­fice is end­ing af­ter five years as agreed. Gilbert Lupfer, who pre­vi­ous­ly held an hon­orary po­si­tion on the Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board, is now its sole mem­ber.

Foun­da­tion Board chair­man and head of the Of­fice of the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and the Me­dia, Dr. Gün­ter Winands, praised the new full-time di­rec­tor: “Prof. Lupfer has been pro­vid­ing out­stand­ing pro­fes­sion­al ex­per­tise to the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion since 2017 in his role as hon­orary Ex­ec­u­tive Board mem­ber. We are de­light­ed that he will now put his ex­ten­sive ex­per­tise to good use as the full-time Ex­ec­u­tive Board. Over re­cent years, Prof. Lupfer has played a cru­cial role in help­ing the Foun­da­tion be­come a na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized in­sti­tu­tion for the pro­mo­tion of prove­nance re­search. Un­der his lead­er­ship, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion will con­tin­ue to step up its ef­forts to re­search and re­turn Nazi-con­fis­cat­ed prop­er­ty, and will be in a po­si­tion to con­tin­u­ous­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly de­vel­op its work.”

Gilbert Lupfer earned his ha­bil­i­ta­tion in 2002 and has been ad­junct pro­fes­sor of Art His­to­ry at TU Dres­den since 2007. In 2002, he be­gan work­ing at the Dres­den State Art Col­lec­tions (SKD), first as head of the re­search project “Mu­se­um and Art in To­tal­i­tar­i­an Sys­tems”, and since 2008, he has been head of the “Daphne” prove­nance re­search, cat­a­loging and in­ven­to­ry project. In 2013, he al­so be­came di­rec­tor of the SKD’s De­part­ment of Re­search and Sci­en­tif­ic Co­op­er­a­tion. Prof. Lupfer al­ready served the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion as deputy chair­man of the Fund­ing Com­mit­tee. He al­so chaired the ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee of the pre­vi­ous Magde­burg Co­or­di­na­tion Of­fice and was a mem­ber of the for­mer Bu­reau for Prove­nance Re­search, which both merged to be­come the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion. He was ap­point­ed to the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion’s Ex­ec­u­tive Board in 2017.

In a state­ment, Gilbert Lupfer said: “Since it was found­ed in 2015, the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion has de­vel­oped enor­mous­ly and gained new ar­eas of ac­tiv­i­ty. I aim to de­vel­op these ar­eas fur­ther with­out los­ing sight of our core sub­ject: the con­fis­ca­tion of cul­tur­al goods un­der the Nazi regime, and I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing with a high­ly ex­pe­ri­enced and pro­fes­sion­al team in Magde­burg and Berlin.”

The Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion in Magde­burg was es­tab­lished in 2015 by the Ger­man fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the fed­er­al states and the lead­ing mu­nic­i­pal as­so­ci­a­tions. Lo­cat­ed in Ger­many, it is the cen­tral point of con­tact, na­tion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, for all mat­ters per­tain­ing to the un­law­ful seizure of cul­tur­al goods. The Foun­da­tion’s pri­ma­ry fo­cus is on cul­tur­al goods con­fis­cat­ed as a re­sult of per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist era, es­pe­cial­ly prop­er­ty owned by Jew­ish cit­i­zens. The Foun­da­tion sees its work as an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to­wards com­pen­sat­ing vic­tims for the in­jus­tice they suf­fered.