Web aids hunt for stolen art

A new Web site designed to help museums determine whether their collections include art stolen by the Nazis went online Monday, with 66 institutions -- including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Chicago’s Art Institute -- providing details of their collections to the central registry.

The Internet portal at www.nepip.org can be searched for objects that were seized by Germany before and during World War II. Created by the American Assn. of Museums, the site contains information on more than 5,700 items. Plans call for it to eventually be linked to similar sites in Europe.

From 1933 until the end of the Third Reich in 1945, the Nazis systematically robbed Jewish families and others of their art.

Some pieces were sold to bankroll Nazi activities, while others were intended for the private collections of party officials or a museum that Adolf Hitler planned in the Austrian city of Linz, his hometown.

Early last year, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art returned a late medieval textile canopy to the Princes Czartoryski Foundation Museum in Krakow, Poland. The piece, which had been in LACMA’s collection since 1971, had been seized by the Nazis in 1941.

-- Louise Roug