A collaboration between the National Museum of Asian Art (Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery) of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Zentralarchiv and Museum für Asiatische Kunst was launched in November 2020 with the aim of building an international network in the field of provenance research on Asian art and fostering collaborative research on trade networks and market mechanisms in this area. The partnership emerged from the three-year German-American Provenance Research Exchange Program for Museum Professionals (PREP, 2017 to 2019), jointly established by the SPK and the Smithsonian.
The project is set to run for a total of five years, and kicked off in December 2020 with the webinar series: “Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art”, which will run until the end of 2022. Each webinar takes place in cooperation with a third partner institution. The series was launched on 3 December 2020 with a webinar focusing on C. T. Loo, one of the most important dealers of Chinese and Southeast Asian art in the first half of the 20th century, in collaboration with the Rietberg Museum in Zurich.The other webinars in the series followed in a quarter-semi-annual rhythm.
The series was followed by a international symposium in Washington D.C. from 1 to 4 November 2023 bringing together the global research community that has emerged through the webinars and agree on joint research initiatives up to 2025.
Institutions: Zentralarchiv und Museum für Asiatische Kunst der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
Project coordination and research: Dr. Christine Howald
Project partners: National Museum of Asian Art / Smithsonian Institution
Duration: 2020 bis 2025
Website: Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art
