Collecting And Provenance

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.

This collection of essays highlights the enduring significance of provenance and its implications for historians and art historians, as well as students and researchers engaged in museum studies. It also offers an opportunity to demonstrate its relevance to other fields of expertise, such as conservation, visual culture studies, aesthetics, authentication and connoisseurship versus technology as a means of establishing attributions and detecting forgeries. Provenance is still of vital importance to jurisdiction, whether it concerns property law or ownership. It also remains topical because of the ongoing debates over looted art in the 1930s and 1940s and the illicit trade in antiquities conducted from Iraq and Syria by terrorist groups.

"This volume of essays offers new arguments regarding the significance of the social biography of art and the transformative power of ownership. It realigns the traditional art-historical paradigm that focuses on the moment of an object's origin and instead considers the longue durée of ownership. Whereas the term provenance may call to mind little more than a list of owners or the legal questions raised by competing entitlement claims, the essays in this book demonstrate that a nuanced approach recuperates important, even dramatic, aspects of the history of art. The authors present a broad perspective on provenance, investigating examples from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and from ancient archaeology to conceptual art. They explore how stories of ownership are attached to objects, analyze important distinctions between provenance and provenience, and show how provenance can be monetized, politicized, suppressed, or otherwise instrumentalized."--Page 4 of cover.

"The AAM Guide to Provenance Research is a much-needed contribution for scholars, professional researchers, and those who shape policy. Here in one volume is a historical overview, description of current methodology, invaluable indices, inventories, and lists of current databases-in-progress." -- Back cover.

How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised ‘elsewhere’ and ‘otherwise’. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland – and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition-making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful. Across Anthropology charts new ground by analysing the convergences of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe’s reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies. Preface by Arjun Appadurai. Afterword by Roger Sansi Contributors: Arjun Appadurai (New York University), Annette Bhagwati (Museum Rietberg, Zurich), Clémentine Deliss (Berlin), Sarah Demart (Saint-Louis University, Brussels), Natasha Ginwala (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Emmanuel Grimaud (CNRS, Paris), Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós (Paris), Erica Lehrer (Concordia University, Montreal), Toma Muteba Luntumbue (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Sharon Macdonald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin), Margareta von Oswald (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Roger Sansi (Barcelona University), Alexander Schellow (Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels), Arnd Schneider (University of Oslo), Anna Seiderer (University Paris 8), Nanette Snoep (Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cologne), Nora Sternfeld (Kunsthochschule Kassel), Anne-Christine Taylor (Paris), Jonas Tinius (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Thoroughly innovative and occasionally irreverent, this book will appeal in equal measure to book historians, Austen fans, and scholars of literary celebrity.

By exploring the processes of collecting, which challenge the bounds of normally acceptable practice, this book debates the practice of collecting 'difficult' objects, from a historical and contemporary perspective; and discusses the acquisition of objects related to war and genocide, and those purchased from the internet, as well as considering human remains, mass produced objects and illicitly traded antiquities. The aim is to apply a critical approach to the rigidity of museums in maintaining essentially nineteenth-century ideas of collecting; and to move towards identifying priorities for collection policies in museums, which are inclusive of acquiring 'difficult' objects. Much of the book engages with the question of the limits to the practice of collecting as a means to think through the implementation of new strategies.