Provenance research
Ardelia traces it, beginning with art looted by the Nazis.
Introduction
Ask Ardelia a question in plain language. It searches wartime inventories and sale records, through misspellings, translations and code names, and returns a provenance you can check line by line.
It begins with the Jeu de Paume, the Paris museum where the Nazis sorted the art they seized in France.
How Ardelia reads a provenance
Portrait of a Woman, oil on canvas
Illustrative entry. The work and its owners are invented, but the sources are the ones Ardelia searches.
Private collection, Paris, by 1937.
Getty Provenance Index, German Sales Catalogs
Seized by the ERR, 1941; inventoried at the Jeu de Paume.
ERR Jeu de Paume database
No record, 1944 to 1951.
A gap is shown as a gap, never filled with a guess.
Sale, Paris, 1952, lot 31.
Getty Provenance Index, German Sales Catalogs
Indexed as of 14 September 2026
41,254
objects from the ERR Jeu de Paume database
831,833
sale lots from the Getty Provenance Index, German Sales Catalogs
Every search states what it covered, and what it did not.
Built for
Mission & Vision
More than 600,000 works of art were looted by the Nazis. Eighty years on, many are still missing, and so are the records that would bring them home.
Mission
Every looted work has a rightful owner. Ardelia finds the record that proves it. Draft
Vision
No stolen work should stay hidden behind a missing record, from the Nazi era to the looted art of Africa, Asia and the pre-Columbian Americas. Draft
Ambitions Draft
The name
“Rose kept the record and Ardelia used it. Our tool is named for the second half of that story, and it runs on the first.”
Rose Valland, a curator at the Jeu de Paume, secretly recorded the works the Nazis looted through it. From 1946, Ardelia Hall of the U.S. State Department used those records for eighteen years, returning more than 4,000 objects to fourteen countries.
Launch
Ardelia opens to institutions
Coming soon
Publicity
2026
Martha Sessums, “How AI Tech Helps Track French Art Looted in WWII,” Bonjour Paris, 2 October 2026.
We are trying to help people who don’t have the resources or access to data.
2026
Author name, “Headline of the article,” Publication, date. Next entry
Team
Ardelia was developed at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.
Michael A. Santoro
President and CEO
Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, Santa Clara University
Michael A. Santoro is President and CEO of Ardelia, Inc. At Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business he leads the research project that built Ardelia: AI that reads the fragmented, error-ridden records of wartime looting so provenance researchers can track and prove the history of looted art.
The work began with a friend trying to trace a family painting stolen during the Second World War, who could afford the research when most families cannot. “We are trying to help people who don’t have the resources or access to data.” He now aims to carry Ardelia beyond the Nazi era, to looted African, Asian and Pre-Columbian art.
A Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, he brings decades of scholarship in human rights, business ethics and AI governance. He taught at Rutgers Business School for twenty years, wrote books including Profits and Principles and Wall Street Values, testified before the U.S. Senate, and was a Fulbright Fellow. He holds degrees from Harvard, NYU School of Law and Oberlin College.
Michele Samorani
Chief Technology Officer
Associate Professor of Information Systems and Analytics, Santa Clara University
Michele Samorani is Chief Technology Officer of Ardelia and Associate Professor of Information Systems and Analytics at the Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, where Samorani also directs the Master of Science in Information Systems program.
Samorani co-developed Ardelia’s AI, which learns from provenance investigations done by hand to recognise what makes a history suspicious, and which works deserve a closer look. “Before AI, you would have to know which patterns to look for. But AI is going to figure out the patterns that will be important.”
Fuller biography to come
Avery Pigott
Role To come
Art History and International Relations, Stanford University
Avery Pigott is a junior at Stanford University studying Art History and International Relations. Through her experience in the art market and conducting provenance research for archaeological collections, she has developed a particular interest in the intersection of law, cultural heritage and the art market.
She plans to pursue a career in art law and is beginning her honors thesis on wartime-looted art and contemporary restitution disputes.
Name
Role To come
Biography to come
Name
Role To come
Biography to come
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