# A Museum’s ‘Wanted’ Poster Campaign Brings Looted Painting Back to France

- community: News (news@lemmy.world)
- author: gedaliyah@lemmy.world
- posted: 2026-11-11T11:28:08.578241Z (1h ago)
- score: 19 · 3 replies
- address: https://dboft.com/post/22209/a-museums-wanted-poster-campaign-brings-looted-painting-back-to-france
- link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/11/world/europe/france-art-wanted-poster.html

The museum launched a campaign this summer to track down nearly 400 works looted during World War II. It created “Wanted” posters with images of lost art, plastering them in and around the city of Orléans and flooding the internet. Now, the first case has been solved.

An amateur sleuth in France discovered one of the looted paintings last month in Switzerland, as it was set for sale. Now instead of being put up for auction, “The Drinker,” a 17th-century work by the Dutch artist Willem Cornelisz Duyster, will soon be returned to Orléans.

## Replies

- **Eq0@literature.cafe** · 4 pts · 47m: Can somebody enlighten me on the property laws surrounding this? 
  
  Let’s assume someone inherited that painting some decades ago. They have almost a hundred years of proved ownership of it. But before that it was stolen. When does the original owner fully loose the property rights?
- **TrackenDaKracken@lemmy.world** · 0 pts · 8m: Non NYT article:
  
  https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/french-museum-wanted-poster-campaign-for-stolen-paintings-successful-1234804603/
- **Sharkticon@lemmy.zip** · -1 pts · 26m: Lol, the idea of France of all places complaining about looted art.