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Provenance Research at the Clark Library: General studies

Research guide to provenance resources at the Clark library, with emphasis on the World War II era.

General information on looted art during World War II

The following books can be used to find out about how works of art were looted, stolen, and dispersed during and after World War II.  Click the "Records of Lost Works" tab to find information on specific countries and collections.

Akinsha, Konstantin.  Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe's Art Treasures.  New York:  Random House, 1995.
Stacks  N9160 A33

 

Alford, Kenneth D.  Hermann Göring and the Nazi Art Collection: The Looting of Europe's Treasures and their Dispersal after World War II.  Jefferson, NC :  McFarland & Company, 2012.
Stacks  N9160 A547

 

Bruckler, Theodor.  Kunstraub, Kunstbergung und Restitution in Österreich, 1938 bis Heute.  Wien:  Böhlau, 1999.
Stacks  N9165 A88 B78

 

Farmer, Walter I.  The Safekeepers: A Memoir of the Arts at the End of World War II.  Berlin:  W. de Gruyter, 2000.
Stacks  N9165 G4 F37

 

Feliciano, Hector.  The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art.  New York:  Basic Books, 1997.
Stacks  N9174 F45 E

 

Kowalski, Wojciech.  Art Treasures and War: A Study on the Restitution of Looted Cultural Property, Pursuant to Public International Law.  Leicester, UK:  Institute of Art and Law, 1998.
Stacks N9160 K68

 

Müller, Melissa.  Lost lives, Lost Art: Jewish Collectors, Nazi Art Theft, and the Quest for Justice.  New York:  Vendome Press, c2010.
Stacks  N9160 M855 E

 

Nicholas, Lynn H.  The Rape of Europa:  The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War.  New York:  Knopf, 1994.
Stacks  N9160 N53

 

Petropoulos, Jonathan.  Art as Politics in the Third Reich.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Stacks N8727 P47

 

-----.  The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2000.
Stacks  N9165 G4 P4

 

Simpson, Elizabeth.  The Spoils of War: World War II and its Aftermath: The Loss, Reappearance, and Recovery of Cultural Property.  New York:  Abrams, 1997.
Stacks  N9160 S66 1995

Vincent Van Gogh, Painter on the Road to Tarascon

Vincent Van Gogh, Painter on the Road to Tarascon, 1888.  Oil on canvas.

Seized by the Nazis, this painting is thought to have been destroyed when the Allied forces bombed Magdeburg, setting fire to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, which contained stolen art.

Search the Clark library online catalog for more

Locate other titles in the Clark library by doing a KEYWORD search in the library catalog for any of the following subject terms.  Enclose phrases in quotation marks.   (Example:  “art thefts”)

Art thefts

War and art

Art treasures in war

World War, 1939-1945 -- Art and the war