How to Track the Falsification of Provenance?

*** see new 2023 video from the Knowledge Graph Conference ***

False provenance is a feature of Nazi looted art. How to track multiple versions of provenance texts over time and identify, classify and analyse "errors"? 

We begin by listing some of the most frequently observed "errors".

Types of "errors" observed in provenance texts of Nazi looted art, forced sales and duress sales:

Provenance Error Type	Description
NameOmitted	real owner name omitted
NameAdded	fake owner name inserted
WrongDate	incorrect date
WrongPlace	incorrect place
WrongSeller	incorrect identification of seller
WrongBuyer	incorrection identification of buyer
WrongDealer	incorrect identification of the dealer or intermediary
WrongTransaction	incorrect representation of the nature of the transaction
WrongStory	incorrect represention of the sequence of events
NameMispelled	mispelled name
Other	other

Who authored and published the errors? Who financed the research and publication? When? In what context? These elements can be described in the metadata of the provenance text.

Provenance text metadata suggestions

Provenance Text Metadata	Description
Publisher	Name and URI of the person or organisation that published the provenance text
Type of publication	book, article, catalogue raisonné, website, other
Publication	Title, identifier
Author	Name and identifier of the individual who wrote the provenance (or if this is not available, the insitution)
Payer	Name and identifier of whoever ordered or paid for the writing of the provenance
Date of publication	Date the version was published
Version	a number indication the version of the provenance
URL to Provenance Text	If published online, the url
Archived URL	URL to the provenance version on a specific date (important because online provenance changes)
Archive date	Date of the archived URL
Artwork the provenance describes	Title and identifiers for the artwork described (url, accession number)
Noteworthycircumstances	significant events that may help explain the particularities of the version
Known to contain errors	Y/N (if yes, refer to error type)
Other

A look at sources

Provenances cite source documents. Who wrote the sources cited? Who published them, when - and why? What new information did they introduce? Have any problems of accuracy already been identified in the source document?
One cannot assess the reliability of a provenance text without verifying the reliability of the sources it cites.

Provenance Source Cited Metadata Suggestions

Provenance Source Metadata	Description
Date source cited was published	Original publication date of the source cited
Author of source cited	Author of the source cited.
Publisher of source cited	Name and ID of the publisher of the source cited.
Reliability of source cited	Have any false provenances been found in the source cited?
New information introduced by source cited	Did the source cited introduce a new name, date, place, explanation? Which?
First citation of source cited	Name and ID of the first publication to cite the source cited
Payer of source cited	Name and ID of the person or organization that financed the publication of the source cited
Uncertainty of source cited	Does the footnote refering to the source cited contain a ? or words like probably, likely, possibly indicating uncertainty or speculation?
Contemporaneous?	Y/N
Red Flag on Author or Publisher?	Y/N Is the author, publisher or payer of the source publication on the ALIU Red Flag list of Names from 1946?
Holocaust Claim?	Y/N Does the name of the author, publisher or payer appear in any legal documents connected to a Holocaust art claim?

What has already been done in tracking provenance errors? How can these be coded? Provenance errors, like potato chips, rarely stop at just one.
To be continued....

photo by Evan-Amos / Public domain

Art Market and the Holocaust: New Questions about the Miedl Looted Art Network

Alois Miedl: art looter 

Miedl's network according to the Art Looting Investigation Unit Final Report of 1946 Red Flag Names List includes a number of names that appear frequently in provenances. Every one of the names below was identified as a Red Flag Name by the ALIU.

Questions for Holocaust-era art historians: Which artworks in which collections include any of these names in their provenance?

Are there gaps in the ownership history 1933-1945?

What is the appropriate action to resolve these unclear provenances?

Hendricks	Frankfurt	Dealer who did business with Miedl
Lempertz	Cologne	Art dealer who worked with Miedl	Bornheim once worked under him
Leegenhoek, M O	Paris, 1 rue de Rennes/230 blvd Raspail	Belgian national	Prominent restorer and subsequent dealer who sold extensively to Hofer, Lohse, Wendland, Wuester, Dietrich, Haberstock, Miedl, Goepel and the great majority of important German purchasers	Formerly associated with Lagrand, and connected with van der Veken and Renders in Belgium	Believed still to be in Paris	Possibly active in Wendland’s behalf
de Boer, Pitt	Amsterdam, Heerengracht 512	Important and active dealer	President of the Dutch Dealers Association since Goudstikker’s death	Acquired Swiss as well as Dutch nationality early in the war, and visited Switzerland during the occupation	Discovered the first in the series of false Vermeers by van Meegeren	Close contact of Hofer, Muehlmann, Posse, Voss, Lohse and Miedl
Brack	Amsterdam	Dealer	Worked with Hoogendijk and Miedl
Denijs, Frl J	Amsterdam, N Spiegelstraat 32 or 29/Kaisersgracht	Member of Dutch Art Dealers syndicate (Vereeniging van Handelaron in Oudo Kunst)	Active during occupation	In contact with Hofer	Assisted Miedl in liquidation of Goudstikker firm	Worked with Jan Dik Jr
Erasmus, Dr	Hilversum Geldern bei Haarlem	German middleman/dealer, formerly in Berlin	Escaped to Holland shortly before the war	In contact with Plietzsch, Miedl, Katz, Modrczewski
Goudstikker, J (deceased)	Amsterdam, Heerengracht 458	The most prominent of the Dutch art dealers before the war	Killed while escaping from Holland by ship at the time of the German advance	His family escaped to America	His business was taken over by Alois Miedl
Hoogendijk	Amsterdam, Kaizersgracht 640/Roemorvischerstraat 34	Prominent dealer who sold to Miedl, Hofer, Posse, Muehlmann and Voss during the occupation	Close friend of Friedlander and Schneider	Contact of Nathan Katz	Goering frequently visited his shop
Katz, Nathan	The Hague, Lange Voorhuit 35 Dieren, bei Arnhem	Prominent dealer	Worked principally with Hofer, Posse and Miedl, as well as Lange, Haberstock, Boehler and other German buyers	Two brothers in the Western Hemisphere: Benjamin Katz, Hotel Dauphin, New York and Abraham Katz, 18 Pietermaai, Wilhelmstad, Curacao
Paech, Walter	Amsterdam, Rokin 57/Diepenbroekstraat 9	German dealer-artist, resident for many years in Holland	Not accepted for membership in Dutch syndicate of art dealers before the war	Close contact of Wieth, Jan Dik Jr, Hofer, Miedl, Muehlmann and Schilling	Also believed to have sold to Posse
de Wild	The Hague, Laan van Meerdeveert	Dealer-restorer	Son of a well known restorer	Worked for the Dienststelle Muehlmann	Did business with Miedl	Has a brother in the United States

Nazi-era Provenance Gaps and Digital Analytics: A Stunning Lack of Progress

As 2019 draws to a close, one is astonished at how little digital analysis has been published concerning artworks that changed hands during the Nazi era and still have provenance gaps today.

Powerful digital tools exist. Yet they are not used by the Nazi-era art provenance research community. 

• There is no "dashboard".
• No "at-a-glance" executive summary that tells us how the different museums and institutions around the world are advancing in their provenance research projects related to the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi era. 
• No "Transparency/Opacity Index" to identify institutions that do and do not publish provenance
• No executive management tool (with goals, tasks, resources, action items and persons responsible) for ensuring that provenance information is publicly available, much less accurate.  
• No single database that brings together provenances that have already been published publicly. 
• No world map that compares the pre-1932 location of Jewish-owned artworks and their current location today.
• No digital network analysis of the art dealers, collectors, institutions, publishers, and experts who collectively managed to shift artworks once owned by Jewish collectors in Europe to other hands.
• No database of fake provenances, (and authors of fake provenances), even though "errors" in provenance texts correlate significantly with illicit transactions that a person or persons has tried concealed
• No attempt at pattern detection in the provenance texts, though tools for regression analysis and even AI are becoming mainstream

Here we are in the digital age, but only the tiniest fraction of the power of the digital tools available has been applied to the problem of the Nazi-era art market. 

The task is massive, as everyone knows. Each individual artwork can take years to research. Archives are missing, hidden, destroyed, manipulated. Access is hard to obtain. Partial. But even amid all these obstacles, there is plenty that can be done in using digital tools to gain insights from the research that already exists. 

Let 2020 be the watershed year in the use of advanced digital tools to track, expose and analyse Nazi-era art provenance gaps.

Perhaps the recent interest in the cultural heritage of colonial era transfers from Africa, Asia and other lands will infuse new energy  and more advanced digital methodologies into provenance research.

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image credit:
Font Awesome by Dave Gandy - https://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Vlug Report: transcription of Part 1

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The Vlug Report, written in December of 1945 and named after its author, the Dutch art historian Jean Vlug, is an important work of investigation into the massive looting of artworks in Holland during World War II.

The Vlug report details the activities of the Dienststelle Mühlmann, which obtained works of art for Hitler, Göring and other Nazis.

The author was Jean Vlug, who served in the Royal Netherlands Army. He was a Dutch "Monuments Men" and investigator with the Art Looting Investigation Unit. His report, marked confidential and unavailable for decades, contains interviews with Nazi art looters as well of lists of artworks.

The following transcription concerns the first fifty pages of Vlug's report. The transcription is a work in progress. Please indicate any errors in the comments. Thank you.

For more information about the Vlug report, please see lootedart.com

The National Archives have published photographs of the Vlug report online at Fold3.
The photo above is from The Monuments Men Foundation website which honors Jan Vlug and requests more information about him.