America’s art museums have long taken a leadership role in the restitution of art and other property looted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. American museums were active partners with the United States Army’s Monuments, Fine Art and Archives section, which, in the years following World War II, succeeded in returning hundreds of thousands of objects to the countries where they were located before being looted by the Nazis.

In 1997, AAMD convened a task force to draft guidelines on how its members should handle art looted by the Nazis and not previously restituted. The guidelines, published in June 1998, formed the basis of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art drafted by the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, the first comprehensive conference to address assets stolen by the Nazis. The AAMD also worked closely with the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States to develop guidelines and mechanisms for the identification of works looted by the Nazis and the restitution of those works to the original owners or heirs.

Following an agreement between the AAMD, the AAM, and the Commission, the AAM created a website entitled the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal (nepip), which serves as a publicly accessible resource for information on objects in U.S. museum collections that changed hands in Continental Europe from 1933 to 1945. Since the website was established September 8, 2003, more than 28,000 objects have been posted by 165 U.S. art museums. AAMD member museums also have posted information on their websites regarding works in their collections that changed hands during the Nazi regime. For more information about nepip, visit: http://www.nepip.org.