The Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art

In 2015, the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna carried out stringent research into the provenance of its holding and entered into a close cooperation with the Commission fpr Provenance Research and the National Fund of the Republic of Austria fpr Victims of National Socialism, despite the fact that the Museum is owned by an association and, as such, is not subject to the provision of the Art Restitution Act (Federal Law Gazette I no. 181/1998). Its aim is to deal transparently and proactively with Museum artifacts that may have wrongfully come to be included in its holdings and to restitute them to the legal successors of the persecutees from whom they were looted. Accordingly, the dossieres compiled by the Museum´s provenance resercher, Dr. Claudia Spring, shall be submitted to the Art Restitution Advisory Board and its decisions implemented in a procedure analogous to that of the federal museums. In addition, artifacts with dubious provenance will be recorded in the National Fund´s art database.