The Art Loss Register (ALR) was established in 1991 by leading auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, dealer organizations and the insurance industry, including Lloyd’s and Nordstern, as well as the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) as a response to the rise in art theft. In the 1980’s, as the art market expanded and prices for art reached historic levels, there was a corresponding rise in the incidence of art theft.
The goals of the ALR are to recover stolen works of art and to deter art theft by making it more difficult for stolen works to circulate through the legitimate market. To accomplish these goals, the ALR works closely with the art community, insurance industry and law enforcement agencies worldwide.
The ALR database, the largest independent database in the world, currently consists of approximately 80,000 items registered as stolen. Each month, 1200 new registrations are received from numerous sources including private theft victims such as individuals, art galleries and museums, as well as the insurance industry, and law enforcement agencies like Interpol, the FBI and local police.
Registration must fit certain criteria. First, the item must have been reported to the police as a theft. Second, each item should have a value of at least $500 and third, the piece must be uniquely identifiable. An image, though not required or absolutely necessary, is of course highly desirable, since matching an image in the database with a work that has appeared on the market or for which the police have information, is often crucial to a recovery. Images in the ALR database are linked with text that includes a description of the registered item, as well as information on the theft and the victim. Data is initially accessed by a textual description that may be the name of an artist, type of work or description including key words for identification. Such a search of the database generates a list of possible matches based on the selected criteria. Images can be quickly matched, whether of the object in an auction catalogue or purchase under consideration by a museum, dealer or collector.
The ALR database and searching system were designed to meet the needs and knowledge of various constituencies involved in recovering stolen art, and can accommodate these different levels of expertise. For example, a police detective will describe an artwork somewhat differently than a trained professional, such as an appraiser. An object can be searched either by a visual description such as “people in a room, a woman playing a piano, all dressed in period clothing,” or an art historical one such as “a painting by Vermeer, entitled ‘The Concert.’”
The ALR offers two types of services to the public, both to the theft victim with the theft registration service and to the potential buyer, with our searching service. Registration of a stolen work is a way of notifying the art buying public that an object is stolen property. When a dealer, collector or museum requests a search for a potential purchase, the work is automatically checked against similar stolen or lost objects. Registration also records an item on a recognized database. Since it may be many years before a lost or stolen item reappears, registration is often necessary for the theft victim to bolster a case for title.
Several court cases over the past few years have raised the question of “due diligence,” not only on the part of the purchaser of a work, but also on the part of the victim of the theft. Victims of art theft have been asked: “What did you do to let the public know your work was stolen and what steps have you taken to find it?” Filing a police report of the theft and an insurance claim are important steps towards due diligence, as well as registering the stolen work with the ALR, and therefore placing the status of the stolen object on record.
The Art Loss Register's search service equally addresses a potential buyer's need to determine if a work under consideration for purchase might be stolen. Dealers, museums, and private collectors regularly check with the ALR prior to purchasing an object. If it is determined at a later date that a work of art has been stolen, the search conducted by the buyer helps to demonstrate due diligence on his part as well as showing that he is a good faith purchaser. The ALR, in addition to this search service, screens items in upcoming auctions for many of the major auction houses.
Since 1991, the Art Loss Register has recovered $35 million in stolen works, representing almost 850 objects as well as at least 2,000 associated items (works recovered because the ALR identified one work which led to the recovery of another). As with any information system or database, the ALR’s effectiveness in recovering stolen art is dependent on its use by both theft victims and art buyers --- for registration and for searching.
