Two paintings by Signac and one by Pissarro are expected to fetch as much as £20m

Dealer Oscar Stettiner’s grandson says painting, now owned by David Nahmad, was looted by Nazis

Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman, is married to Sindika Dokolo who has been working for years on repatriating works to the African continent

Tel Aviv Museum of Art reveals surprising provenance of 19th-century work by Jozef Israëls, which will be restituted to Jewish owner’s heirs in October

But restitution depends on the adoption of a law covering these specific items, while Benin secures a location to house them

We look back at the major events that made the headlines this year

Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian minister of antiquities, corrals international team of experts to press institutions for return of important artefacts

Saxon government acknowledges “years of disregard for their dignity and importance to their communities of origin”

Statue of a cockerel was looted by the British in 1897 from the Court of Benin

Work once belonged to the shoe manufacturer Alfred Hess, whose family was forced to flee Nazi Germany

Leo Bendel was killed at Buchenwald three years after he sold the painting by Carl Spitzweg to fund his escape from Nazi Germany

The gesture is intended as a symbol of France’s commitment to repatriating African heritage

Paid over four years, it will support efforts made by museums, grassroots-organisations and governments

The report made international headlines, recommending the restitution of African artefacts in French museums, but the country has not returned a single item to Africa

National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo agrees to buy the painting, Ships at Sea in Stormy Weather

A three-way battle is brewing in New York courts as the heirs of two Holocaust victims take on the work’s current owner

Gari Melchers's painting of a winter landscape, which was in the Arkell Museum in the state of New York, belonged to the media mogul Rudolf Mosse

But return of the objects permanently to Namibia is not the immediate goal, says Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation

Discussion argued for community empowerment, new skillsets, and focus on contemporary colonialism

While the president is the first to allow Title III of Helms-Burton Act to be used, some whose collections were taken doubt it will have an impact

Move reignites debate over British Museum’s position on sculptures brought to Britain by Lord Elgin

For first time, advisory team stipulates that work must not be sold for ten years in case evidence emerges that contradicts its ruling

Spokeswoman for the London museum says it has not been officially approached by the country over the return of the two objects made by the Taíno people in its collection

Pioneering agreement to share contested work from Gurlitt trove provides a roadmap for similar legal cases

France’s president pledged to return 26 items seized in the 19th century by the French military

An Austrian army officer took the 2,000-year-old objects from a war-damaged museum in the port of Temryuk at the end of the Second World War

Suggestions from controversial Savoy-Sarr report were all-but buried at a conference held in Paris

The Dutch still-life heads back to the Florence museum after bold campaign by director

The case 'shouldn't be heard in a US court', argues the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation

Study reveals that up to 8% of museum acquisitions were looted from private citizens