Computer Archive And Stolen Art

The request was simple enough: Lloyd's underwriters had been approached to insure the movement of seven paintings, including one by Cezanne, from Russia to London for valuation and sale. So Lloyd's contacted the Art Loss Register, a small private company in London whose computer archive lists 180,000 items ranging from sculpture and silver to textiles, books, stamps and vehicles - and many of the great art works stolen or missing around the world. What the insurance company discovered in 1999 was that the works, including Cezanne's "Fruit and Jug," had been stolen in 1978 from the home of American collector Michael Bakwin in Massachusetts. Thus began a long investigation, including Art Loss Register researchers and negotiators, that resulted in the FBI announcing last month the arrest of a lawyer. He allegedly had obtained the art from the thief, who had been murdered by another criminal after the robbery. In the end, Bakwin got his paintings back and sold the Cezanne for $35 million. In 2002, an art dealer's routine search of the archive for a 1922 Picasso, "Woman in White," owned by an American philanthropist, led to the discovery that it had been looted by the Nazi occupiers of Paris. Research by Art Loss Register staff in four countries provided valuable information to the complex litigation that followed over its ownership, which ended in a financial settlement. The Art Loss Register was created 1991, taking over and expanding a database that had been operated since the 1970s by the International Foundation for Art Research in New York.The register is mainly funded by theft victims and their insurers, museums, galleries and auction houses. It charges $50 per search. (Associated Press - For full source and article click the Headline) Irish Art