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Events for The Fourth Day of Provenance Research at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

01.04.2022
Zentralarchiv

The 13 April 2022 marks the fourth international Day of Provenance Research. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin will once again be taking part and providing insights into the work of provenance researchers from the fields of European art, postcolonial provenance research and archaeology

• 11 am and 2 pm: Guided tours of the exhibition The Art of Society at the Neue Nationalgalerie with a focus on provenance research and the history of collections
• 3 pm: Digital presentation and discussion on the research project Traces of the ‘Boxer War’ in German Museum Collections
• 6 pm: Digital book presentation Konstantinopel – Samos – Berlin. Verpfändung, Fundteilung und heimliche Ausfuhr von Antiken am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges [Constantinople – Samos – Berlin: Pledges, Partage and Clandestine Exports of Antiquities on the Eve of The First World War], edited by Laura Puritani, Martin Maischberger and Birgit Sporleder. Berlin 2022 

Guided tours of the exhibition The Art of Society in the Neue Nationalgalerie

with a focus on provenance research and the history of collections

• How did the portrait of Harry Graf Kessler by Edvard Munch end up at the Nationalgalerie?
• What is the story behind Picasso’s large Reclining Nude?
• What do Lyonel Feininger’s Teltow II, Rudolf Belling’s Brass Head and Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s Head of a Thinker have in common?
• Who was Sonja, the woman who became an icon of the Roaring Twenties through Christian Schad’s painting of the same name?

Curator Dieter Scholz and provenance researcher for European art at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Zentralarchiv Sven Haase explore these and other questions in a tour of the exhibition The Art of Society 1900–1945: The Nationalgalerie Collection. The tour focuses on the origins and biographies of individual works of art, addresses historical ownership and provides insights into the collection history. It also and presents topics and methods of provenance research on the Neue Nationalgalerie’s 1905–1945 holdings using works from the exhibition The Art of Society as examples.

To register: participant numbers are limited.
When: 13 April, 11 am and 2 pm (duration: approx. 90 minutes)
Where: Neue Nationalgalerie, Potsdamer Strasse 50, 10785 Berlin
Who: Dieter Scholz, Sven Haase

Digital presentation and discussion on the research project Traces of the ‘Boxer War’ in German Museum

CollectionsThe newly launched project Traces of the ‘Boxer War’ in German Museum Collections – A Joint Approach invites you to an online discussion. Participating curators and researchers will clearly and concisely present the aims and approaches of the joint project using individual objects from the respective museum collections. Afterwards, they will open the space for questions and ideas from the audience.

During the so-called “Boxer War”, thousands of works of art and other artefacts were looted from imperial palaces, temples and private households in China between 1900 and 1901. These also found their way into German museum collections. Their problematic origins are known in very few cases, and the various ways in which they came to the museums have only been rudimentarily researched.

This project, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, is being carried out by a network of seven German museums under the direction of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Zentralarchiv and in collaboration with the University of Shanghai. The participating museums are the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Museum für Asiatische Kunst and Ethnologisches Museum, the GRASSI Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Leipzig, the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main and the Museum Fünf Kontinente in Munich.

To register: Until 11 April 2022 by email at boxerprojekt[at]smb.spk-berlin.de. The number of participants is limited to 100.
When: 13 April, 3 pm
Where: Zoom, the event link will be sent to participants one day before the event.
Who: Christine Howald, Kerstin Pannhorst, Susanne Knödel, Wibke Schrape, Silvia Gaetti, Katharina Weiler 

Digital book launch of the new volume of the publication series of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Zentralarchiv

Konstantinopel – Samos – Berlin: Verpfändung, Fundteilung und heimliche Ausfuhr von Antiken am Vorabend des Ersten Weltkrieges. Edited by Laura Puritani, Martin Maischberger and Birgit Sporleder. Berlin 2022

The years leading up to the First World War were marked by political upheaval and uncertainty in the eastern Mediterranean region. Between 1910 and 1914, the excavations led by the then Königliche Museen zu Berlin took place on the island of Samos. Numerous finds reached Berlin, but only some of them by way of the official partage agreement. Between 1913 and 1914, the German Empire also negotiated with the High Porte (the government of the Ottoman Empire) about the pledging of antiquities from the Archaeological Museum of Constantinople (today’s Istanbul), with the aim of the Berlin museums taking permanent possession of them.

The contributions collected in the volume shed light on the intense entanglement between politics, business, science and culture in the late phase of the German Empire. At the digital book launch of the Zentralarchiv’s publication series, the authors of the volume will present their research on the pledging, partage and clandestine export of archaeological objects that are still in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s Antikensammlung today.

To register: Until 12 April 2022 at provenienzforschung[at]smb.spk-berlin.de, the number of participants is limited to 300.
When: 13 April, 6 pm
Where: Webex Meetings
Who: Panellists: Martin Maischberger, Laura Puritani, Gabriele Mietke, Raik Stolzenberg. Moderation: Birgit Sporleder

Provenance research on Twitter

If you would like to keep up to date with the various events of the Day of Provenance Research on 13 April 2022, as well as with the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s work on provenance research in general, follow the Dahlem Provenance Research Team’s Twitter account: Postcolonial Provenance Research Dahlem @PPR_SMB.

Day of Provenance Research

The Day of Provenance Research is an initiative of the Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e.V., which connects more than 400 researchers and experts right across the world who work on investigating the origins of cultural artefacts.

You can follow all the action on Twitter under the hashtag #TagderProvenienzforschung.