Musées nationaux récupération
National Museum Recuperation (MNR) is the French state body that handles artworks looted by the Nazis and recovered after World War II. After the war, Allied forces recovered about 61,000 looted artworks in Germany and France decided what to do with them. About 45,000 were returned to their owners, while around 2,100 remained in the custody of the MNR or the national museums.
The MNR, short for Musées Nationaux Récupération, covers roughly 2,000 works. Many of the oldest paintings are in the Louvre’s Department of Paintings, and the rest are in other French museums. The artworks in the MNR are researched to locate their rightful owners and returned if possible. France maintains an online database for MNR items at Rose-Valland.
During the Nazi occupation, the German embassy in Paris and its representative, Otto Abetz, organized large seizures of art. The ERR (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg) looted many works and shipped thousands of cases to Germany between 1940 and 1944. A 1949 decree ended the previous recovery commission and required museums to create a formal inventory of recovered works, registered with an R for “récupération” (recovery). Museums use special codes for MNR objects.
In 2017, the Louvre opened two rooms to display 31 MNR paintings, in addition to 76 works already on display, with notes about their origin. Earlier, the restitution process faced criticism for opacity and speed, but some looted artworks have been returned to their rightful owners.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:48 (CET).