Events Intro Content

The Commission for Art Recovery helps to provide opportunities for attorneys, academics, and interested professionals to discuss best practices in the efforts to spur restitution. We organize, co-sponsor and participate in national and international lectures and conferences.

In late June 2009, just a little more than ten years after the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, representatives of 46 nations met in Prague, Czech Republic, to discuss developments, changes and recommendations on how to meet the challenges of recovering art and cultural objects looted during the time from Hitler's rise in 1933 to the end of World War II. Holocaust education and remembrance were also prime subjects at the conference, as were immovable assets. The US Delegation was chaired by Stuart Eizenstat; his remarks are provided in a link at the left. Charles A. Goldstein, chaired a session (Sunday morning, June 28, 2009) on Legal Issues featuring experts from Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Representatives of the Commission for Art Recovery also participated in preparatory meetings in Paris.

The Prague Conference issued two statements that can be read on its website: the Joint Declaration and the Terezín Declaration at http://www.holocausteraassets.eu/press/press-releases/. The conference's website provides many official documents; we are adding texts of several speakers' talks.

In February 2008, Harvard Law School hosted a two-day symposium on the subject of spoils of war and the legal framework of Russian cultural property. The participants explored the historical context and legal grounds for claims in favor of and against using art works and other cultural heritage objects as items for compensation in-kind. The event, sponsored by the Commission for Art Recovery, was open to the public.

The Commission for Art recovery has participated in numerous programs sponsored by the Institute of Art and Law in London since June 2008, and restitution seminars in Malaga, Spain, Milan, Italy, and Berlin, Germany. Such gatherings are important for the exchange of band ideas and the explanation of the need for restitution. In October 2010, the Commission for Art Recovery also helped to support a moving performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, of "Defiant Requiem" and the development of a film documentary on the performances of the Requiem by Jews in the Theresienstadt ghetto.