Art Provenance Research: Artists, Dealers, Collectors, & Objects Resources

MOLA is a collaborative effort to preserve, display, and study provenance information in a virtual museum.

This final rule revises and replaces definitions and procedures for lineal descendants, Indian Tribes, Native Hawaiian organizations, museums, and Federal agencies to implement the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. These regulations clarify and improve upon the systematic processes for the disposition or repatriation of Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony.

Provides guidance for NAGPRA compliance

The Antiquities Coalition is leading the international campaign against cultural racketeering, the illicit trade in ancient art and artifacts, to protect shared heritage and global security.

Freely available, Red Lists present the categories of cultural objects subject to possible theft and trafficking. They help identify objects at risk and prevent them from being illegally sold or exported. The cultural items depicted on the lists are inventoried objects within the collections of recognized institutions.

The Census offers systematic documentation of antique works of art known to artists during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

An aggregate that links databases to detect Nazi looted art. Focused on network analysis, pattern detection, and text analysis to expand on WWII provenance research.
**Note: Aggregates CANNOT clear the provenance for a work of art and should not be used alone.

The Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project Foundation is creating a cross-searchable digital platform for archival documentation, research, and education on the looting of Jewish-owned cultural property by the Nazis, their allies, and collaborators.
**Note: Aggregates CANNOT clear the provenance for a work of art and should not be used alone.

Database of Nazi registration cards and photographs of the more than 20,000 art objects taken from Jews in France and Belgium.

The Central Registry has two fully searchable databases, an Information and an Object Database.

Contains information relating to works of art, archives, and other types of cultural property displaced as a consequence of war. The primary focus is the period of WWII. Research projects are related to Jeu de Paume, looting in Latin American and neutral countries, and Russian trophy art.

German database of property expropriated during WWII. Includes lists of lost objects and found object reports.

Catalog of works gathered at the 'Central Depot for Seized Collections' at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria.

NARA holds millions of records created or received by the U.S. Government during and after World War II that document Nazi war crimes, wartime refugee issues, and activities and investigations of U.S. Government agencies involved in the identification and recovery of looted assets (including gold, art, and cultural property).

Provides various resources in the following areas: historical research on paper in Europe, expertise on paper documents, measurement of paper structural characteristics, support for the creation of new paper databases, and introduction to digital paper studies.

The database includes a wide range of marks, such as maker's marks, guild hallmarks, positioning marks, and trade or transport marks.

Database of collectors' marks found on drawings and prints. Also includes sales information and index to names of collectors, artists, dealers, and publishers.

The goal of this Watermark Database is to store, process, and provide watermark data of sources such as books, drawings, letters, prints, etc.