The Nasher Museum of Art

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University was founded as the Duke University Museum of Art (DUMA) in 1969 with the purchase of the Brummer Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Art. The museum holds more than 13,000 works of art, including the Brummer Collection of medieval and renaissance art, the George Harley Memorial Collection of African art, a collection of classical Greek and Roman antiquities and more than 3,000 works of ancient American art.

The museum's current collecting focus is on its growing collection of contemporary art.

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As part of its mission, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University conducts and publishes research on the artworks in its collections. One important component of that research is the documentation of a work's provenance, or previous history of ownership before it was acquired by the museum, as can be determined through surviving records, physical evidence, and additional enquiry.

In December 1999 the American Association of Museums issued its Guidelines Concerning the Unlawful Appropriation of Objects During the Nazi Era, asking museums to identify works in their collections having incomplete provenances for the period 1933 to 1945. The Nasher Museum of Art participates in the provenance website coordinated by the American Association of Museum, i.e., NEPIP.org (for the Nazi-Era Provenance Information Portal). The Nasher Museum also subscribes to the Art Loss Register and is uploading to that website (www.artloss.com) antiquities which came into the museum's collection after 1970 without provenance history as well as works in the museum's collections for which incomplete provenance is known during the Nazi Era (1933-1945).

It is important to note that such gaps of information in an artwork's provenance indicate that further research is needed to complete the history of ownership for each item, and does not in itself constitute evidence of such works having been improperly looted form archaeological sites or seized by the Nazis from victims of the Holocaust. Indeed, it is often the case that records do not survive from half a century ago, especially for artworks sold by private individuals, unless the buyer was able to obtain such documentation at the time of purchase. As research continues and provenances are confirmed, items will be removed from the list when their ownership history is no longer incomplete for this period.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University welcomes any information that the public has on the ownership history of works in its collections. For further assistance, please contact: Sarah Schroth, Nancy Hanks Senior Curator (sarah.schroth@duke.edu).