National Museums Recovery

After the Second World War, the Allied forces discovered a trove of artworks and decorative objects from France, dispersed throughout Germany and the Nazi-occupied territories. A vast number of these had been looted by the Nazis, mainly from Jewish families. The Allies sent 61,000 of these works back to France.

Created in 1944, the Commission for the Recovery of Works of Art (CRA) made 45,000 restitutions to the artworks’ rightful owners or their beneficiaries before 1950. Open case files were eventually entrusted to the Office des biens et intérêts privés (OBIP; Office for Personal Property and Interests) at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1949 to 1953, a Select Committee made a selection of about 2,000 works. These are not part of the French national collections, in accordance with their status as defined in a 30 September 1949 decree. They are not listed in museum inventories, but rather in special provisional inventories, which together form a repository of works designated by the acronym ‘MNR’ (Musées Nationaux Récupération, or National Museums Recovery). 

MNR works include a number of pieces that were not acquired through looting, but sold on the art market by their owners during the Nazi occupation of France for reasons other than threats or persecutionsome pieces were even commissionned by the Nazi forces. Museums who hold MNR works have a responsibility to carry out research in order to identify the owners of these artworks, with a view to restitution to their beneficiaries if possible. The exact proportion of looted works within the MNR repository is an unsettled matter, as the provenance of a majority of these works remains unclear. MNR works found to have been looted may be restituted to their rightul owners, with no statute of limitations, through a decision by the Prime Minister following a recommendation by the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliation (CIVS) or through a decision by the Ministry of Culture.

Cover image : Théodore Géricault, Head of a Lioness, about 1819 - © 2012 GrandPalaisRmn (musée du Louvre) / Philippe Fuzeau