Can a restitution claim about looted art become time-barred?

Not in the restitution procedure. The Dutch Restitutions Committee does not raise limitation as a defence, and the Best Practices to the Washington Principles of March 2024 state expressly that formal barriers such as limitation should not be a reason to reject a claim. Go to the civil courts instead with a claim in ownership and the ordinary rules of the Dutch Civil Code do apply. There, limitation can still end the case. That difference often decides which route a family takes.

Does a private collector have to take part in the Restitutions Committee procedure?

No. Where the object is not in State ownership, the committee issues a binding advice, and that is only possible if the claimant and the current holder jointly submit to it. Refuse and there is no procedure, leaving the claimant only the courts. In practice that is less free of consequence than it sounds. Refusing is a choice you have to be able to explain in public, certainly once the press takes an interest. If you do take part, know what you are signing. The advice is binding and can only be set aside within two months, and then on limited grounds.

When have you acquired an artwork in good faith?

Good faith is not the same as having known nothing. You have to have been reasonably entitled to assume the seller had the right to transfer the work. What that takes depends on who you are. More research is expected of a museum or a professional dealer than of someone buying a work once. In practice it comes down to this: ask about the provenance, ask for documents, search the registers and record what you did. Watch for a low price, a vague provenance and a seller in a hurry. Those are the signals you will later be told you should have noticed.

I want to buy a work with a gap in its provenance between 1933 and 1945. Can I?

You can, but not without looking first. A gap in those years is not proof of looting and is more common than people think, because archives were lost and much of the trade ran without paperwork. It is, however, exactly the gap restitution claims come out of. At a minimum, run a search in the Art Loss Register, the German Lost Art database and the Jeu de Paume database. Ask the seller in writing what is known about those years, and keep the answer. What you do next is a risk assessment, and it belongs in the purchase agreement. A warranty on provenance, a right of return, or a price that reflects the risk. Those are the three levers you have.

Provenance research and art restitution

A drawing has hung in the permanent display for sixty years. Then a letter arrives from a granddaughter, with a pre-war photograph of a living room in which that same work hangs on the wall.

That is how a restitution case usually starts. Not with a writ, but with a question. A museum that already knows how the work entered the collection is in a very different position from one that still has to find out.

This page sets out the Dutch framework: when provenance research is required, how a restitution claim runs, and when a stolen work can still be recovered in law.

When provenance research is mandatory

For registered Dutch museums it is an obligation. Article 2.3 of the Ethical Code for Museums requires every effort, before acquisition, to establish that an object was not illegally acquired or exported. The Museum Standard repeats that requirement and the Museum Register checks compliance. Buy without that research and your registration is at stake.

For galleries, auction houses and collectors it is written down nowhere as a duty. That group nonetheless carries the greater risk. Your reliance on good faith at the moment of acquisition stands or falls with what you checked and recorded. Buy a work of unknown provenance without asking a single question and you are not, after the fact, a good-faith acquirer.

More about buying and selling artworks →

What to do when a restitution claim on an artwork arrives

Do not say yes straight away. And certainly do not say no.

Start with the facts. What do you know about the acquisition, what is in the archive, and what does the claim rest on? A request supported by a family photograph is a different matter from one supported by a bill of sale from 1942.

Then the route. An amicable settlement with the heirs is possible, and happens regularly. The Restitutions Committee is the other way, set out below.

And then the tone. A restitution case is almost never purely legal. There is a family history behind it and the press is watching. What you write in the first letter will still be there in three years.

Jaap Versteeg guides museums, collectors and heirs through these cases, from the first conversation to the advice. Get in touch as soon as a claim arrives, rather than once positions have hardened.

The registers to search before you buy an artwork

The Art Loss Register is the best known, with a paid search per object. Interpol maintains the Stolen Works of Art Database. For work with a possible wartime provenance, the German Lost Art database and the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg database on the Jeu de Paume are the most useful.

In the Netherlands there is musealeverwervingen.nl. It holds the results of two sector-wide studies by the Museums Association: Museum Acquisitions 1940-1948, reported in 1999, and Museum Acquisitions from 1933 onwards, reported in 2014. In that second study 163 museums together reported 173 objects that may have been looted, confiscated or sold under duress.

Record what you searched and on what date. A search that returns nothing is only worth something if you can show you ran it.

Restitution of looted art: two routes, one committee

The Restitutions Committee, in full the Advisory Committee on the Assessment of Restitution Applications for Items of Cultural Value and the Second World War, has existed since December 2001 and has at most seven members. It handles claims about cultural objects lost involuntarily between 1933 and 1945, in most cases by Jewish owners.

Which route applies depends on who holds the work now.

If it is in State ownership, in the NK collection for instance, the committee advises the minister and the minister decides.

If it sits with a municipal museum, a foundation or a private owner, the committee issues a binding advice. That is only possible where the claimant and the current holder jointly submit to it. On this route the committee also weighs whether the current holder acquired the work in good faith. On the State route that question does not arise.

Since the assessment framework of April 2021 there is no longer a balancing of interests. Until then the holder’s interest in keeping the work could be weighed against the interest of the heirs. That weight was removed following the critical report of the Kohnstamm committee of December 2020. The current establishing decree was published in the Government Gazette in 2021.

Underpinning all of this are the Washington Principles of 1998. Best Practices were added in March 2024, stating among other things that forced sales fall within scope and that limitation should not be a reason to reject a claim.

The time limits in the Restitutions Committee procedure

The committee has no statutory decision period. Its rules do set time limits per step, and those keep running.

Four weeks to accept the rules. Six weeks for your written explanation. Six weeks to respond to the draft statement of facts, and another six to the final version. After the hearing the draft advice follows within six weeks. To have a binding advice set aside you have two months.

Add those steps up and you are past six months, and that is before the research. The committee does not carry out that research itself. It sits with the Expert Centre for Restitution of Cultural Objects and the Second World War, housed at the NIOD since 2018.

Limitation: when a stolen artwork can still be recovered

For an ordinary stolen movable item, the owner has three years from the day of the theft to recover it. That is article 3:86(3) of the Dutch Civil Code. There is an exception: where a private individual buys the work on the business premises of a dealer trading in comparable goods, recovery does not succeed.

For cultural objects the position differs. Article 3:86a of the Civil Code provides that those defences do not work against an EU member state recovering an unlawfully exported cultural object, nor against the owner of a work designated as a protected cultural object.

The periods are in article 3:310a. Three years after the location and the holder became known, and in any event thirty years after the day the work was taken out of the territory. For work from a public collection and for protected ecclesiastical goods, that last period is seventy-five years.

For wartime looted art it works differently. Those claims run not through the Dutch Heritage Act but through the restitution policy, where limitation is not raised as a defence.

Returns from a colonial context follow another committee

Where an object came to the Netherlands in colonial times, the Restitutions Committee is not the right place. Since 2022 there is a separate Advisory Committee on the Return of Cultural Objects from a Colonial Context.

Two differences stand out. The request comes from the country of origin rather than from a family. And the committee only handles objects owned by the Dutch State. A municipal museum or a private collection falls outside it, which means those institutions make their own assessment and have to be able to explain their own policy.

More about collection management and the Heritage Act →

More about inheriting and bequeathing art →

More about art law →

Get in touch with Jaap Versteeg

Have you received a restitution claim, or do you want to recover a work from your own family history? Unsure about the provenance of a purchase? Get in touch with Jaap Versteeg. Call 020 675 88 21 or email him for an initial consultation.

Acknowledge receipt without taking a position, and appoint one point of contact. Then the work starts in your own archive: the deed of sale or gift, correspondence around the acquisition, the inventory card, old catalogues and annual reports.

Check too whether the object was reported in the Dutch sector-wide study at musealeverwervingen.nl. If it is there, part of the research has already been done.

Inform your board or supervisory board straight away. This touches the collection and the reputation, and those are not things a curator carries alone.

Take a substantive position only once you know what is in your own file. Bear in mind that the claimant has often spent years on research while you are only starting.