A Year in Provenance Transformed

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archaeology, art, art crime, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, education, Markham Caerus, new project, outreach, Patreon

Announcing Markham Caerus on Patreon!

When I first timidly started a blog, my mentor stressed that everything on the internet evolves, blogs no exception. And working on A Year in Provenance led both the nature of the blog and the research behind it in unexpected directions. AYIP began with the Markham Caerus project, to study art crime in both fine art and archaeology, and that project has evolved into something bigger and more ambitious, and that new scope needed a new platform. Public education, awareness, and insight are now a major focus, and Markham Caerus has found a new way to achieve that through Patreon.

Unprovenanced Artifacts—Publish or Perish?

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antiquities, archaeology, art crime, art market, artefact, artifact, authenticity, Biblical Archaeology Review, Biblical Archaeology Society, collecting, cultural preservation, excavation, provenance

Click to read the editorial

This editorial from the most recent issue of Biblical Archaeology Review does an excellent job of summarizing the concerns raised by studying artefacts that were inadequately, improperly, or even illegally excavated. Within this example, comparing two scholarly books, author Hershel Shenks outlines every major problem currently being debated; I highly recommend it as a brief introduction to a typically abstruse discussion.

What to Do with Unprovenanced Artifacts—Publish or Perish?

New Year, New Questions

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art crime, Einstein, interdisciplinary, Markham Caerus, provenance, quote, research

Click to visit the Gallery of Stolen Art on Pinterest

My first few months on A Year in Provenance have been mostly devoted to sharing information, plus a few personal ideas. This year, perhaps the goal should be to make things more personal. The starched collar of academic training will always wrap ’round its disciples’ work, demanding loyalty to the objective fact, free from private feelings and bias; in an academic setting, that is its strength. But a blog is a different animal— its strength is in its flexibility, its presence in everyday life, and its possibility of rapid and diverse dialogue. I want to explore more of these features this year.

Artistic Pinspiration!

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antiquities, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, board, heist, looting, Pinterest

Practical people, on hearing that one’s chosen field is something like art history or anthropology, will often ask (perhaps not unreasonably), “but what can you do with that?”. If an archaeologist or other rare species seems frustrated by the question, it is not for lack of an answer, but rather, because the questioner is missing the point. No one plunges deeply into an abstract academic profession because a magazine article listed it in “Top Ten Careers for Wealth and Prestige”; we do it because we love it. When I was a student, and still now when I work, whenever I get caught up in the effort, or am sick of stumbling on a problem-block, I always come back to the art, and am always cured. An hour in a gallery, or a museum, alone with something a thousand years old, and the wonder, the amazement at humankind and its history remind me why I wanted to do this.

The Problem of Public Awareness

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archaeology, art crime, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, collecting, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, excavation, interdisciplinary, looting, public awareness

It is in the nature of research to take one in unexpected directions; what I was not prepared for was a single, simple idea that struck to the heart of a major problem of art crime. I was working on a post recently on how to recognise and protect archaeological sites for the general public; especially in North America, sites can be very hard to detect on the surface and artefacts hard to identify. Sometimes sites are damaged by people who don’t even realise they are on top of archaeology. Trying to develop a simple explanation of what sites and artefacts might look like, I realised I had a deeper question: what might be the consequences if I did?

Links: ARCA

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ARCA, art, art crime, art forgery, art market, art theft, art trafficking, cultural preservation, interdisciplinary, international law, looting, provenance, repatriation, research, smuggling

The Association for Research Into Crimes Against Art is an important international organisation doing exactly what the name suggests, and their site is highly recommended. Conceived as a think tank, it connects professionals from the varied disciplines relevant to art crime worldwide, promotes scholarship, and emphasizes public outreach. The group organises conferences and training in interdisciplinary research, publishes, and keeps a blog on recent media relevant to art crime. It also has outstanding links to more specialised blogs and sites.

Click here or above to go to ARCA’s site.

 

Glossary: Forgery

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art, art crime, art forgery, art instruction, art technique, authenticity, classical, copy, counterfeit, museum, reproduction, visual problems

At first glance, the word forgery seems unnecessary for a specialised glossary; it’s a common word, readily understood. The briefest definition I found was: (n.) the action of forging or producing a copy of a document, signature, banknote, or work of art. But as a strict definition, couldn’t that apply to a museum gift shop print? The next dictionary was clearer: (n.) 1) The act of forging, especially the illegal production of something counterfeit. 2) Something counterfeit, forged, or fraudulent. So it is not enough that something be a copy, it must be a copy intended to deceive. But how does one determine intent when looking at an object? The definition of forgery may be simple on its face, but in the context of art, its meaning is complex.

Modernist Meditation

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art, art crime, art market, art theft, collecting, installation, modern art, museum, Portland Art Museum, provenance

Courtesy Portland Art Museum

I was at the Portland Art Museum this morning (like many of Oregon’s features, an under-the-radar gem, with an impressive scope to its collections), listening to a charming lecture from the curator, and suddenly found myself distracted by images from the modern and contemporary galleries. Leaving aside my personal opinions on modern art, I began to wonder—has the twenty-first century created unstealable art?

What Provenance Doesn’t Do

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archaeology, art, art crime, artefact, artifact, conservation, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, museum, provenance, research, restoration

After the complexity of explaining the scale of art crime, the impact on art and archaeology, and the difficulty of solving the resultant problems, the next challenge is explaining the limits of art crime research. Provenance is only one of the fields critical to preserving the material culture of the past—conservation, restoration, and scholarship are also essential. All are specialties within other specialised fields, and they can overlap, be compartmentalised, be blurred together, and be at odds as only facets of the academic world can. Even for people in that world, it can be confusing.

The Thomas Crown Affair

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art, art crime, art market, art theft, collecting, heist, museum, Thomas Crown Affair

An art crime researcher watching a heist movie for leisure is probably as bad as a personal trainer doing push-ups to unwind, but even intense intellectual scrutiny of caper films can’t escape one thing—they’re fun. Watching a movie with someone who can debate its accuracy and presentation is either fascinating or maddening, so out of compassion for my friends, I try to keep quiet, but I can’t help making mental notes. Perhaps it should be heresy that I can enjoy movies about art theft, but The Thomas Crown Affair lets me forget about the ugliness for a while and lose myself in the game.