Glossary: Collecting History

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art, art history, authenticity, collecting, collecting history, collecting history vs. provenance, due diligence, origins, provenance

I came across an excellent point during my reading: some art professionals propose that the term “collecting history” is more relevant than “provenance”, and should be strictly used for accuracy. The argument is that “provenance” is too vague, that it refers only to an object’s origins, and that what is more crucial is its history since. Collecting history means (or should mean) a complete record of ownership from a piece’s creation or discovery to the present.

The Value of Unprovenanced Antiquities

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antiquities, archaeology, art market, artefact, artifact, collecting, cultural preservation, excavation, looting, provenance, research, value

“Regarding the issue of unprovenanced antiquities: surely even without substantiated provenance, there is still some factual knowledge to be derived– the approximate age of the item, for instance, and its general geographic origin? As a layperson in this area, I understand the additional value of confirmed provenance, but should that also mean that an item lacking provenance has no value at all?”

This was a great question in response to my last post, discussing a magazine editorial on scholarship, ethics, and artefacts lacking in proper archaeological provenance. (An unprovenanced artefact is one with an incomplete or unscientific record of its origin). The one-sentence answer is yes, there is always something to be gained from any existing piece. The more complete, complex answer has to do with the importance of knowledge and the nature of scientific inquiry. In archaeology, consider provenance another word for context. The moment something is pulled out of the ground, 90 percent of its meaning is lost.

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.

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.

 

Authenticity and Value

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art, art history, art market, artefact, artifact, authenticity, collecting, cultural preservation, museum, provenance, reproduction, value

After my last post, on forgery, I found myself still thinking about the meaning of authenticity, and the questions it raises; questions for which I have no answers. During the 19th century, it was common for art, especially sculpture, to be “restored” to make it more beautiful. Broken-off pieces like arms, feet, even heads, would be replaced with new pieces and seamlessly added to statues, with little concern for the piece’s original composition. The intent was usually not to produce an accurate restoration, but to make the piece as aesthetically pleasing as possible, according to the standards of the day. Many such pieces are now considered hopelessly inaccurate, not just because of modern knowledge, but by modern standards. In other centuries, a work of art’s great value lay in its beauty; in ours, art’s greatest value is in its authenticity.

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.

Glossary: In Situ

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antiquities, archaeology, art, artefact, artifact, cultural preservation, excavation, in situ, provenance, research

In situ, a Latin expression used in English and other languages, is possibly the most important term in archaeology. It means the original site, spot, or context, and is usually mentioned when discussing an excavation, where an object’s findspot must be accurately recorded. In archaeology, the value of an object is in its relation to the space and the other objects around it; analysis and technology can reveal what something was made of, how, and when, it could even hint at how it was used, but only the context can tell us what it meant to the people who used it. This is a crucial concept in studying provenance, the history of an object—knowing where something came from means little without knowing where it started. (N.B. the term doesn’t really have any application in the fine art world, only archaeology).

Why is it important that an artefact be discovered in situ? As one archaeologist said, “it’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.”

The Impact of Art Crime II: Cultural Loss Is Forever

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antiquities, archaeology, art, art crime, art market, art theft, art trafficking, artefact, artifact, cultural heritage, cultural preservation, in situ, looting, provenance

In economics, there is a model called the broken window fallacy. The example is a thug that breaks a store window: a new window, supplies, and labour all have to be expended to repair the damage, none of which would have happened without that crime. Money is spent, things are happening; doesn’t that stimulate the economy? Two seconds’ thought shows the absurdity; destruction is not productive, and crime does not create prosperity. (If that still seems abstract, imagine being the owner of that store). Now imagine that there were no windows on earth that could replace the broken one. People could offer different kinds of walls, a door installed in the hole left by the window, or a security grill, but there could never again be a window for people to look into.