EVENT: Provenance and Restitution with Shared Knowledge Graphs September 15

 Free and open to the public - online or in person - register by Sept 12!

On September 15, the German Lost Art Foundation has graciously invited me to give a talk on Provenance and Restitution in their series "Kolloquium Provenienzforschung".

https://kulturgutverluste.de/termine/kolloquium-provenienzforschung-shared-knowledge-graphs-tool-recovering

The topic is “Shared knowledge graphs as a tool in recovering looted cultural heritage and the histories of marginalized people“. 

I hope the information provided will be helpful to cultural heritage professionals, provenance researchers, claimants, Holocaust scholars, art crime experts, museum and art market people.

(Do not let the words "knowledge graph" scare you. In this talk, I’ll show how we can connect information—people, places, artworks, events—into a kind of map of relationships. Think of it as a network of stories and connections. We can use this to retrieve lost information and to explore hidden networks over long periods of time, which is very useful for Nazi-looted art as well as other kinds of stolen or disappeared cultural heritage.) 

The event will take place at the Deutsches Zentrum Kulturgutverluste, Außenstelle Berlin, Seydelstraße 18, 10117 Berlin. 

It is also possible to join the event via Webex. (Register by Sep 12)

Registrations to:
German Lost Art Foundation
Heinrich Natho
Humboldtstr. 12 | 39112 Magdeburg
veranstaltungen@kulturgutverluste.de

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See complete announcement below

SEVEN DATASETS: Frederick Mont or Galerie Sanct Lucas in the Provenance of Artworks

Frederick Mont (1894-1994) was an art dealer who sold artworks to dozens of major art museums and art collectors.

Mont, originally named Fritz Mondschein, owned the Sanct Lucas Gallery. 

Mont is known to have worked with the Austrian Nazi SS art dealer and looter Bernhard Witke and was involved in selling at least two artworks looted from the Jewish collector Julius Priester, including the El Greco, Portrait of a Gentleman.

Mont also sold a forgery to Sherman Lee at the Cleveland Museum of Art as a Grunewald, but, according to the NYT, pigment tests conducted by the museum's conservator, Ross Merrill,  proved conclusively that the painting was a 20th‐century forgery.

The provenances of those artworks were falsified, with fake owners and entirely fake histories inserted into the texts. 

Art historians, provenance researchers and scholars of the Holocaust should keep this context in mind when evaluating the ownership histories that have been published for artworks that passed through Mont's hands.

Mont was not an honest man. Everything Frederick Mont or his Galerie Sanct Lucas claimed about an artwork should be considered questionable unless it is proven to be true.

DATASETS

Frederick Mont and Galerie Sanct Lucas in GLAMHACK2020 provenances from several museums, analysed for uncertainty, anonymity and unreliability (94 records)

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Frederick Mont and Galerie Sanct Lucas in Getty Provenance Index Public Collections (showing only the lines that mention Mont/Lucas)

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Frederick Mont Sanct Lucas in Provenance Texts of Artworks at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 25 AUG 2020  

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NEPIP NGA Frederick Mont and Sanct Lucas in Provenance Texts of Artworks listed on the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal by the NGA

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RKD: Frederick Mont mentioned in artworks at the RKD

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Kress Collection: Frederick Mont and Galerie Sanct Lucas K-codes and provenance (in Color)

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Frederick Mont at Sotheby's and Christie's- PUBLIC

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Linked Data References for Frederick Mont or Galerie Sanct Lucas

Wikidata: Q33315010 

Viaf: 139936107  

Union List of Artist Names ID: 500437571 

WorldCat Identities ID: lccn-no2007138555

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RKDartists ID: 431910

Top Art Looting Investigation Unit Red List Names (by Frequency)

FOLD3: digitized from the NARA microfilm publication, M1782
https://www.fold3.com/title/631/wwii-oss-art-looting-investigation-reports/description

In 1946 the OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit published its Final Report. The Report was accompanied by an Index of Names and a summary of findings called the Red Flag List of Names.

The Red Flag List of Names, while not exhaustive, is extremely interesting for network analysis because of its prosopographical approach, A name could be mentioned more more than a hundred times, with extensive links to others, or only once, with a couple of links.
The document was classified and basically unavailable for many years.

But today, nearly twenty years after the  Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, what is known of these Red Flag names?
How are they reflected in authority files?