JOINT PROVENANCE RESEARCH

Federal Chancellery and Leopold Museum Private Foundation

In May of 2008 the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts, and Culture and the Leopold Museum Private Foundation together established a joint provenance research initiative aimed at the independent examination and documentation of the provenance of all art objects in the museum’s collection. Since then, Mag. Dr. Sonja Niederacher and MMag. Dr. Michael Wladika have been examining the provenance of all works created before 1938, beginning with Egon Schiele’s oeuvre. The research findings on individual works are published as dossiers on a continual basis.
Moreover, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts, and Culture has set up a board chaired by the former federal minister Dr. Nikolaus Michalek. Depending on what these dossiers reveal, the board shall decide whether the Austrian Art Restitution Law I 1998/181 as amended by I 2009/117 can be applied to those respective art objects, if in the possession of the federal government. Such respective resolutions will also be published. Thus, those interested in the cases may gain insight into the work of the joint provenance research effort in its entirety.