Congress Passes Important Law Governing Nazi-Looted Art ClaimsCongress Passes Important Law Governing Nazi-Looted Art Claims

A new law signed by former President Obama on Dec. 16, 2016 addresses the Nazis’ theft of hundreds of thousands of artworks, an event that Congress has called “the ‘greatest displacement of art in human history.’”¹ That law, the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2016, establishes a uniform, federal statute of limitations (SOL) for claims seeking the recovery of artwork and certain other objects that were confiscated by the Nazis. Now, these claims may be brought within six years of the claimant’s actual discovery of facts giving rise to the claim (including the whereabouts of the object). Before the HEAR Act, the timeliness of such claims was governed by generally more restrictive state laws, which varied from state to st...