At the symposium “Art Looting and Restitution“ experts discussed the practice and future of art restitution at Urania in Vienna on 18 January 2007. It is hardly foreseeable when research on the provenance (history of ownership) of works of art and restitution will be concluded, stated restitution researcher and co-organiser Michael Wladika.

Among the subjects discussed was provenance research at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), where the provenance of 420 objects of art or 20% of the acquisitions of the NS period was still not determined. According to Monika Mayer, provenance researcher at Öster-reichische Galerie, currently the status of about 600 paintings and sculptures is still unclear. Hannah Lessing presented the art database of the National Fund for the Victims of National Socialism, which was launched in October 2006 and contains about 8,000 objects of art. One half comes from federal museums and the second half from museums of the City of Vienna.