The New Year brought a pleasant surprise to the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden when a previously stolen Matisse valued at $1M was recovered by Christopher A. Marinello, an art recovery specialist and lawyer working with the Art Loss Register in London.

A white gold and diamond, Victorian tiara was among a number of treasured family jewels that went missing when the Duchess of Argyll set down her hand luggage at Glasgow Airport in June 2006. The small bag contained a fine, three-string pearl necklace, a Cartier brooch, a large emerald ring and a beautiful pair of pearl earrings.  The Duchess, who had been travelling back to Inveraray Castle from London, reported the theft of the five items to the Glasgow Airport Police and the Art Loss Register, in the hope that one day the pieces would resurface.

Four contemporary paintings stolen in 1988 in a brazen Fourth of July theft from a New York City gallery have been recovered in Cologne, Germany 24 years after the crime.

The Art Loss Register ('ALR') is pleased to announce the recovery of over 400 works of art by celebrated Dutch artist Karel Appel. The collection, which was lost in transit almost ten years ago, was identified with a U.K. logistics company just before Christmas 2011.

Home at last: Uta Wallenstein (left) and Ute Däberitz (right) of the Schloss Friedenstein Foundation and MaryKate Cleary (centre) of the Art Loss Register celebrate the return of the Gnadenpfennig

Pictured Above: Bolivian Ambassador to the U.K, Maria Beatriz Souviron Crespo and Christopher A. Marinello, ALR General Counsel - In a brief ceremony at the Bolivian Embassy in London on 12 September 2011, the paintings were returned to Ambassador Maria Beatriz Souviron Crespo on behalf of the Bolivian Ministry of Culture.

What could have been a protracted legal battle between two very well financed European families and their copious sets of lawyers, has been amicably settled by the Art Loss Register’s art mediation team.