The Institute was founded in 1979 as a department of the Berlin State Museums, overseen by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

The Institute also operates the Center for Provenance Research, tasked with the identification and proper return of looted art from the Nazi period.

The Center for Provenance Research and Investigation (German: Arbeitsstelle für Provenienzrecherche/-forschung (AfP)) supports museums, libraries, archives and other publicly run institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany in the various processes of identifying cultural artifacts in their collections or in their possession which were looted from their lawful owners during the Nazi period.

The Office was established in 2007 as the direct result of findings issued by the working group on matters of restitution set up by the Minister of State for Culture, Bernd Neumann[1] Provisions for the Office have been made possible through financial support from the Cultural Foundation of the German States (German: Kulturstiftung der Länder).

[2] In October 2014 the German Federal Government announced the reformation of the Koordinierungsstelle’s Lost Art Database into a new foundation called the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste (English: “German Center for Lost Cultural Assets”), which will put the Lost Art Database, the Arbeitsstelle für Provenienzforschung (English: “Center for Provenance Research”) in Berlin, the Taskforce of the Munich artworks discovery, and the Research Center for Degenerate Art of the Free University of Berlin under one roof.