The Orphan Art Project grew out of a 2014 New York Times story written by Doreen Carvajal about the relative ease of finding descendants of the owners of the repatriated art held for decades by French museums while waiting for claims.

Doreen Carvajal is a former NYT foreign correspondent in Paris and veteran journalist, she is a 2017 graduate of a year-long art merchant training program at Drouot. The French auction house was the hub of the international art market during World War ll. She has tracked her own ancestors to 15th century Segovia through Spanish Inquisition and archival documents.

Co-founder Bernadette Murphy is a graduate of the École de Louvre and former chief of research and archives for The International New York Times. She also oversaw the project to digitize the archives of the defunct International Herald Tribune.

Elizabeth Farhi, the group’s third co-founder, holds a degree in art history and managed the internship program for The International New York Times in Europe for more than ten years. She has extensive fundraising experience and has also worked to preserve the International Herald Tribune archives.