Art Loss Register

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The Art Loss Register (ALR) is the world's largest database of lost and stolen works of art ( art theft and artnapping ). It was founded in 1991 in cooperation between auction houses (including the world's most important auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s ), international art trade associations , representatives of the insurance industry and the International Foundation for Art Research . It emerged from a project by the International Foundation for Art Research , which has been collecting information on art theft from New York since 1976. The Art Loss Register had offices in London (head office), Bath , New York , Cologne and Paris , but consolidated them all at the head office in London in early 2010.

Database

In 2007 the database had over 180,000 entries, in 2010 it was 300,000 according to company information and at the beginning of September 2016 it was already 500,000 art objects. Originally, most of them related to losses in the Third Reich through the expropriation of Jewish and other collectors, as well as in and after the Second World War through targeted art theft by the occupying powers and direct war damage. Another focus is on thefts from museums in Iraq during the occupation by American troops in the Iraq war 2001. But even without armed conflicts, according to an estimate by the FBI in 2005, works of art worth eight billion dollars are stolen annually.

Around 300,000 queries are made in the database every year. After an inquiry, the dealer receives a certificate confirming that the item in question was not reported as a loss at the time of the search. In this way, the dealer can prove the request to the Art Loss Register and that he has thereby fulfilled his duties of care, but not positively that the art object has not been lost.

Priorities and successes

The focus of the work of the ALR is the discrete cooperation with art dealers, insurance companies and specialized investigation teams of police in various, most committed states, including the Art Crime Team of the FBI and the 40-member working group of Italian Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale . In cooperation with art newspapers and magazines around the world, the public is also involved in searches and searches and informed about the background to the trade in illegal works of art.

Since it was founded in 1991, around 5500 art objects have been regained through the Art Loss Register. In the case of works of art of high value, the ALR assumes that around 15% of the works of art will be identified over the course of 25 years; for small objects, the rate is much lower. Other data assume that only around 1.5% of all stolen works of art can be returned. The reasons given are the low priority with which thefts are pursued by the police authorities. Unusual art thefts are the exception in terms of persecution intensity.

Similar facilities

The coordination office for the loss of cultural property in Magdeburg was set up in 1994 specifically for Nazi-looted art in Germany . It operates the Lost Art database and the complete directory of German nationally valuable cultural assets.

The Art Recovery Group (ARG) was launched in 2013 to compete with the Art Loss Register and has been operating the ArtClaim database since 2016. Previously, Chris Marinello, the founder of the Art Recovery Group and a former employee of the Art Loss Register, had reached out-of-court settlement with his former employer on a variety of mutual claims. ArtClaim does not yet provide any information on the number of registered works of art (as of December 2016).

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Luck, Grace. Art Group Is Set Up To Judge Attribution , New York Times. May 8, 1970.
  2. ^ Yarrow, Andrew L. A Lucrative Crime Grows Into a Costly Epidemic, New York Times. March 20, 1990.
  3. ↑ Artloss.com: Our History (accessed August 12, 2012)
  4. ↑ a b Cinthio Briseno: Art thieves on the trail. Fraunhofer Magazin 3.2007, pages 22–23
  5. ↑ a b Artloss.com: Loss Registration (accessed December 27, 2016)
  6. ↑ Ursula Kampmann : "The Art Loss Register gives you a certificate that confirms that the item was not reported as a loss anywhere at the time of the search.", Quoted in: Catrin Lorch: Antiken vom Lastwagen: The international market protects its goods through provenance research : But who will buy the looted property? , in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23./24./25. April 2011, page 20
  7. ^ Robert K. Wittman: Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures . Crown Publishers 2010, ISBN 978-0307461476
  8. ↑ Melanie Gerlis / Javier Pes: Recovery rate for stolen art as low as 1.5% , in: The Art Newspaper v. November 27, 2013 ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ Melanie Gerlis: Art Loss Register faces competition complaint from Art Recovery Group , in: The Art Newspaper v. January 26, 2016 ( Memento from December 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ International Art Claim LC: ArtClaim
  11. ^ Laura Chesters: Art Recovery Group's database goes non-profit . In: Antiques Trade Gazette, November 16, 2016

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