Freer and Sackler Galleries Launch Web site for World War II Provenance Project, 1933-1945

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution [...] initiated a comprehensive provenance research project. Its goal is to identify and clarify questions of ownership history for the Galleries’ Asian artworks that were created before 1946 and acquired after 1932; underwent a change of ownership between 1933 and 1945; and were, or might have been, in continental Europe during that twelve-year period. The project represents a long-term commitment to research as fully as possible the provenance of all objects in any media within the Freer and the Sackler collections that have gaps in ownership history or may have been subject to questionable transfer of ownership or unlawful appropriation during the World War II era. [...]