Report on Activities

REPORT ON ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES ON PROTECTION OF CULTURAL TREASURES IN WAR AREAS - Dec. 31, 1943 Following the meeting of June 25, 1943 the following interim reports have been made and circulated either to the members of the Committee or to organizations requesting them: Minutes of the meeting held on June 25; the summary for the month of July 1943; summary for the month of August, 1943; report contained in letter of October 7, 1943 to Dr. David H. Stevens of the Rockefeller Foundation; report prepared in conjunction with the Committee of the American Defense-Harvard Group on collection of maps, lists and descriptions of art objects and other information for the American Commission. The principal activity of the Committee since July has been the production of maps, prepared in the Frick Art Reference Library, locating the cultural treasures of western Europe. The purpose and preparation of these maps has been explained in previous reports. The Committee has received assurances that the maps are proving useful to our forces in the field. A tabulation of the maps already forwarded (as of January 17, 1944) or now being prepared (the latter in parentheses) follows: City Maps Regional Maps Albania 2 1 Austria (5) Belgium (12) Bulgaria 3 1 Czechoslovakia (21) (6) Denmark 16 21 Franco (incl. Corsica) 119 (48) 7 (12) Greece 16 (4) 18 (11) Holland 17 9 Hungary (9) (3) Italy (incl. Sicily, Sardinia) 162 Romania (10) (2) Yugoslavia 10 2 Totals 345 (109) 59 (34) It is expected that the majority of the maps now being prepared will be in a state to be sent to their destinations very shortly, and even that the entire map-making project as originally laid out, will be finished by the end of February, 1944. A conference on problems relating to the cultural treasures of the Far East has been arranged for January 21, 1944. It is possible that the methods, including maps, developed in the presentation of material in Europe will be used for those areas also. Work is progressing steadily on the files of information being accumulated at the Frick Art Reference Library. The basis of the file is the static or pre-war material accumulated for the purpose of making the maps and accom­panying lists. These cards were assembled with the cooperation of the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the lists prepared by the American Defense-Harvard Group, and the cards prepared by members of the staff of the Frick Art Reference Library in addition to the large group of volunteer workers and our staff mentioned below. Besides those cards, of which there is one not only for every monument included in...