For curators, there's a stigma to having unknowingly acquired or harbored the looted goods. "If it went through Nazi hands, you're basically saying you're a Nazi collaborator. That's the feeling in the museum community," says Basden of the Getty, adding quickly: "You're not, of course. But it reflects badly on the curator who selected the painting. You've not only lost money that's been invested in the painting, you've lost face in the community."

In November 1999, the American Association of Museums called on its members to investigate the history of any art in their collections that was created before 1946 but acquired by the museum after 1932, underwent a change of ownership between those dates and was likely to have been in continental Europe at the time. Museums were also asked to make information about objects of questionable provenance available on the Web.

Under these criteria, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth is investigating the origin of 100 objects of questionable provenance, out of a collection of 60,000, according to Cartwright.

Sarah Kianovsky at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard is studying the provenance of about 400 paintings there, while Harvard University Art Museums at large has a total of 6,000 artworks to look into.

The restitution game is complicated by the fact that the rightful owners of these objects may have been children when the painting or sculpture in question was lost, and may never have known the official title of the piece or the name of the artist. Descendants of Nazi victims may not know exactly what they're looking for.

"Just because someone's grandmother says that the family had a Renoir, it might not have been a Renoir," says Kianovsky.

And while it's hard for a layperson to make sense of primary source material, the opening of more records to the public on the Web could lead to more false claims. "A lot of the claimants are lying," says Basden. "But sometimes they're not." Despite the chance of fraud, museums still take accusations of harboring stolen goods seriously when the "N" word is invoked: "Once you say 'Nazi,' everybody runs. It's like 'shark,'" says Basden.

Can the Web really help sort through the Gestapo's cultural blitzkrieg? So far, the Net has already helped lead to the restitution of at least one painting.

In November 2000, the National Gallery of Art announced that the 17th century painting "Still Life With Fruit and Game" by the Flemish artist Frans Snyders would be restored to its rightful owners, after information about the history of the ownership of the painting appeared on its Web site.

The painting was confiscated from the Stern family collection in Paris by Hermann Goering, the second-in-command of the Third Reich, known for his taste for European painting.

The records of Goering's pillaging will be online in the Getty Research Institute's Provenance Index next year, along with some 1 million art-ownership documents already digitized there. And hidden in those records of the Nazis' historic crimes will be clues that an Internet-era art sleuth could use to bring a work home.

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