Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach

by Jane Milosch (Editor), Nick Pearce (Editor)

Overview

The study of provenance—the history of the creation and ownership of an artefact, work of art, or specimen—provides insights into the history of taste and collecting, illuminating the social, economic, and historic trends in which an object was created and collected. It is as much a history of people as it is of objects, and its study often reveals intricate networks of relationships, patterns of activity and motivations.

This book promotes the study of the history of collecting and collections in all their variety through the lens of provenance, and explores the subject as a cross-disciplinary activity. Perhaps for the first time in a publication, it draws on expertise ranging from art history and anthropology, to natural history and law, looking at periods from antiquity through the 18th century and the Holocaust era to the present, and materials from Europe and the Americas to China and the Pacific. The issues raised are wide-ranging, touching on aspects of authenticity, cultural meaning and material transformation and economic and commercial drivers, as well as collector and object biography.

The book fills a gap in the study of collecting and provenance, taking the subject holistically and from multiple standpoints, better to reflect the widening interest in provenance from a range of disciplinary perspectives. This book will be a service to the field, from established scholars and museum professionals to students of collecting history, cultural heritage, and museum studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538127575
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/28/2019
Pages:	450
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.72(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Jane Milosch directs the Smithsonian Institution’s Provenance Research Exchange Program, and was founding director of the Provenance Research Initiative (SPRI), which focused on WWII-era provenance research, international cultural heritage, and training programs. She previously served as Senior Program Officer for Art, leading pan-institutional programs and strategic planning efforts, and was appointed the U.S. Representative to Germany’s “Schwabing Art Trove” Task Force. She has held curatorial positions at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. and in Detroit, Iowa, and Munich, Germany, and is an Honorary Professor in the School of Culture & Creative Arts, University of Glasgow. She was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2020.

Nick Pearce holds the Sir John Richmond Chair of Fine Art at the University of Glasgow, and specializes in the arts of China, most particularly in the context of the history of collecting. His career has spanned both museums and universities, as he has held positions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Burrell Collection in Glasgow, and at Durham and Edinburgh universities. He joined the University of Glasgow in 1998, where he has held the positions of Head of History of Art and Head of the School of Culture & Creative Arts, and is a Smithsonian Research Associate.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Lynn H. Nicholas, Independent Scholar


Preface

Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Institution


Introduction

Acknowledgements

Nick Pearce, University of Glasgow, and Jane C. Milosch, Smithsonian Institution


Provenance: Past and Future Challenges


1.The Provenance of Provenances

Christian Huemer, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere

2.Intellectual Property and Ownership History

Christel H. Force, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

3.Provenance Research in Museums: From the Back of the House

to the Front

Jane C. Milosch and Andrea Hull, Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative (SPRI)

4.Transforming Research Methodologies: The Frick Art Reference Library’s Collaborative Approach

Louisa Wood Ruby and Samantha Deutch, The Frick Art Reference Library

5.Digging in Digital Archives: Recovering Context for the Getty Museum’s Orpheus Mosaic

Nicole Budrovich, J. Paul Getty Museum

6.Exhibiting Provenance in the University Museum: A Case Study

Nancy Karrels, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

7.Provenance in 2050

David Newbury, J. Paul Getty Trust, and Louise Lippincott, Carnegie Museum of Art


Objects in Motion


8.Provenance as Palimpsest: The Mazarin Venus

Judith Barr, J. Paul Getty Museum

9.Archaeology, Fakery, and Lunacy: N.S. Brown's Chinese Neolithic Collection

Nick Pearce, University of Glasgow

10.The Importance of Provenance in Nineteenth-Century Paris and Beyond: Four Works of Art from Prince Pierre Soltykoff’s Famed Collection of Medieval Art

Christine E. Brennan, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

11.The Medieval Bury Chest: Mapping the Journey from Durham Cathedral to the Burrell Collection, Glasgow

Elizabeth Hancock, University of Glasgow; Erma Hermens, Rijksmuseum; and Lindsay Gordon, Glasgow Museums

12.Plunder, Dissolution, and Dodgy Dealing: The International Market for Spanish Art in the Nineteenth Century

Hilary Macartney, University of Glasgow, and Véronique Gerard Powell, Paris-Sorbonne Université

13.Documenting the Violin Trade in Paris: The Archives of Albert Caressa and Émile Français, 1930-1945

Carla Shapreau, University of California, Berkeley; Jean-Philippe Échard and Christine Laloue, Musée de la musique, Paris

14.Twice Plundered, and Still Far from Home: Tracing Nazi-Looted Books in Minsk and Moscow

Patricia Kennedy Grimsted, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University


Museums and Collection Formation: Provenancing Art and Nature


15.Lost and Found: Reestablishing Provenance for an Entire Museum Collection

Ann McMullen and Maria Galban, National Museum of the American Indian

16.Thomas Pattinson Yeats (1746–1782), Naturalist: Connecting Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, and William Hunter

E. Geoffrey Hancock, University of Glasgow

17.A Kato Mosi Kaka and Other Tongan Treasures from the United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842) in the Smithsonian Institution

Adrienne L. Kaeppler, National Museum of Natural History

18.Provenance and Place in Indigenous Australia

Gaye Sculthorpe, British Museum

19.Pursuing Provenance: Perspectives on the Arts of Africa

Christine Mullen Kreamer, National Museum of African Art

20.One Object, Three Histories: Provenancing the Dromedary

Louise Lippincott, Carnegie Museum of Art

21.Forest Gold

Edward J. Bronikowski, Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park Conservation Biology Institute


Provenance and Collecting Policies: Practical, Legal, and Ethical Challenges


22.A Voyage into the Half-known: Museum Ethics in the Early Twentieth Century

Petra Winter, Staatliche Museen, and Carola Thielecke, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

23.Forgotten Language of the Ledger: Signaling Ownership, Authority, and Provenance with Museum Accession Status

Joshua Gorman, National Museum of American History

24.The Holy Family on an Unholy Odyssey: Legal Ownership of Stolen Trophy Art

Christa Roodt, University of Glasgow

25.Problems, Practices, and Politics of Provenancing Objects from China’s Yuanmingyuan

Louise Tythacott, University of London

26.Crisis Response and Beyond: The National Gallery of Australia’s Asian Art Provenance Project and Other New Initiatives

Bronwyn Campbell, National Gallery of Australia

27.Antiquities Trafficking and the Provenance Problem

Donna Yates and Emiline Smith, University of Glasgow

28.Before, During, and After: Documenting Museum Collections in Times of Crisis and Disaster

Brian I. Daniels and Corine Wegener, Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative


Endnotes

Index

About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

This impressively diverse collection of essays considers the far-reaching applications of provenance research in a truly global context. The title, Collecting and Provenance: A Multidisciplinary Approach, is an understatement: 28 essays written by 40 authors, including case studies on such sundry topics as African art, violins in Paris, and taxidermy dromedaries. Interspersed between these broad-ranging case studies are essays on the significant challenges confronting the field of provenance research in the coming years: technological complexities, the need for stronger international collaboration, and the difficulties inherent in ethically managing collections today that were assembled with the moral code of the past. The result is a comprehensive review of what has and is being done in the field of provenance research, and what remains to be done in the future. Editors Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce unite their experience working on provenance issues in both museums and universities to produce a volume that is particularly useful in a pedagogical context, but also includes many of the captivating stories behind the research.

Museum Management and Curatorship

In so masterfully bringing together the essays of this volume, Jane Milosch and Nick Pearce address the relevance of provenance to collecting history and cultural history in the broadest possible way. They have marshalled a team of experts in fields that include art history, material culture, anthropology, economics, and law, who present case studies ranging across five continents and spanning millennia. Together the twenty-eight chapters of the book, some of which also focus on the value of the most up to date research methodologies, comprise a groundbreaking contribution to the field of provenance research, whose importance has been accorded ever greater recognition thanks to the scholars and editors of this superb book. This is a volume that will be valued for decades to come.

Inge Reist

Provenance research is increasingly critical to a broad range of disciplines with significant and cascading implications. This book provides a nuanced, cogent, and timely overview of present practices while exploring future challenges. It is an indispensable resource for those working in the arts, museums, libraries, archives, and law and policy.

Helen A. Robbins

A persuasive claim is made here for provenance research as a defining activity of responsible curatorship. More than recording an object’s history, it involves forensically researching every aspect of the multiple connections forged through the web of contexts in which objects participate, to establish a dense and inalienable biographical passport.

Arthur MacGregor

Overall, Collecting and Provenance is an excellent purchase for anyone in the GLAM field hoping to learn more about approaches to provenance study—from archival curators to museum registrars, librarians to docents. It may be especially useful for teaching librarians, curators, archivists, et al. who are instructing others in their approach to primary sources, and who may find helpful the numerous examples of case studies in provenance research and investigation. I hope that as researchers and professionals advance the interdisciplinary field of provenance, this will prove a foundational work that suggests structure for an approach not yet wholeheartedly adopted by any of the individual fields in question. As implied early in the chapters, linked data and shared vocabularies hold great promise if well applied; but it will take much greater and more systematic collaboration on the part of the authors and the readers to make that happen.

RBM: A Journal of Rare Books