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Phoenix Ancient Art has been in the news quite a bit lately, and art crime experts are advising museums to verify their collections.
Showing posts with label provenance research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label provenance research. Show all posts
May 26, 2024
Phoenix Ancient Art: selected provenances
May 25, 2024
French government report 2022: The looting of works of art in France during the Occupation, organized, large-scale actions
Below is a translation into English of the following document:
Le pillage des oeuvres d'art en France pendant l'Occupation des actions organisées et de grande envergure
https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Media/Thematiques/Musees/MNR/Le-pillage-des-aeuvres-d-art-en-France-pendant-l-Occupation.pdf
Apr 26, 2024
Koutoulakis in provenances
Where do artworks that passed through notorious looted antiquities trafficker Nicolas Koutoulakis pop up?
Dataset with Koutoulakis-linked items in the:
- J. Paul Getty Museum
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Museum of Fine Art Boston
- and others
DOWNLOAD
Oct 4, 2023
Comparing 1961 and May 30 2019 provenances for Manet's La Sultane in the Bührle collection
How many times did the provenance change?
| Word/Phrase | 1961 Catalogue Count | 2019 Bürhle website Count |
|---|---|---|
| dealer | 1 | 0 |
| silberberg | 1 | 9 |
| ? | 0 | 2 |
| art market | 0 | 1 |
| by | 0 | 7 |
| rosenberg | 0 | 5 |
| might | 0 | 1 |
| until | 0 | 1 |
| no documents | 0 | 1 |
| was never really and completely owned by Silberberg | 0 | 1 |
Edouard Manet
Young Woman in Oriental Garb
ca. 1871
Sep 12, 2023
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts: no provenances for Picasso?
How can a major American museum fail to publish provenance information for European artworks created before 1933?
| Photo | Short Title | Date | AccNum | Credit Line | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Pedestal Table (Translation) | 1922 | 47.10.80 | T. Catesby Jones Collection | NO PROVENANCE |
 | The Banjo Player (Primary Title) | 1921 | 47.10.81 | T. Catesby Jones Collection | NO PROVENANCE |
 | The Horse (Primary Title) | 1901 | 85.795 | Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon | NO PROVENANCE |
 | Head of a Peasant Woman (Former Title) | 1906 | 47.10.78 | T. Catesby Jones Collection | NO PROVENANCE |
 | Still Life (Wineglass and Newspaper) (Primary Title) | ca. 1913–4 | 47.10.83 | T. Catesby Jones Collection | NO PROVENANCE |
 | Fool on Horseback (Former Title) | 1905 | 84.2 | Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon | NO PROVENANCE |
 | Landscape (Translation) | 1907 | 47.10.79 | T. Catesby Jones Collection | NO PROVENANCE |
Sep 2, 2023
DATASET: Latchford Wiener Hecht Sperling Klejman in provenances at Metropolitan Museum of Art
FLASH: 26 Doris Wiener provenances added 17SEP2023!
September 2, 2023
DATASET Metropolitan Museum of Art artworks with links to Douglas Latchford, Doris Wiener, Robert Hecht, Harry Sperling, John Klejman, Klaus G. Perls, Joseph Brummer
Dataset name: Selection Latchford plus Metmuseum 2022
Description: This enhanced Provenance dataset has been constructed from information available on the public internet site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It includes the provenance and credit line information for artworks which mention Douglas Latchford, Doris Wiener, Robert Hecht, Harry Sperling, John Klejman, Klaus G. Perls, Joseph Brummer and others. It is intended to facilitate research into antiquities provenance for scholars, art historians and investigators.
Format: Google Sheet
Download: CSV
Contents:
- Selection
- Source
- RetrievalDate
- YEAR Acquired
- Source Url
- Title Date
- Artist
- Credit Line
- Acc Num
- Provenance (as published by the Metropolitan Museum on its website on March 29, 2022)
- Description
- Artist_Region
- Artwork__tombstone Value
Publisher of Dataset: OAD
Date of Publication: September 2, 2023
Jul 25, 2023
British Museum Acquisitions from Spink and Sons: analysis with ChatGPT prompts
QUESTION TO CHATGPT (code interpreter)
Spink and Sons is an art dealer involved in selling many looted artifacts. Please examine this file and tell me three ways it could be analysed to rank artworks most likely to have been looted
Jun 20, 2023
Picasso in Museums around the world
PROGRESS REPORT
Twenty-five years have passed since the Washington Conference on Holocaust era assets.
***
Yet there is still no central database of museum artworks with their provenances. Some museums - big museums, university art museums - still publish no provenance at all.
Projects are announced, appear, disappear, each separate. There is no central tracking of Nazi era provenance gaps. The scale is enormous. The number of artworks with unclear ownership history for the Nazi era remains extremely high.
Given the enormity of the task, this post looks at the situation in museums for a single artist: Picasso.
(update ongoing)
| Collection | Before 1945 | Image? | Provenance? | Nazi-era Gaps? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MoMA | 659 | yes | sometimes | yes |
| NGA | 258 | yes | yes | yes |
| Pompidou | 59 | yes | no | yes |
| Musée Picasso | 4000+ all dates | yes | no | unknown |
| Albertina | 40 | yes | no | yes |
| Hermitage | 36 | yes | no | yes |
| Fondation Beyeler | 22 | yes | yes | yes |
| Museums in Denmark | 133 | yes | yes | yes |
| UK Collections Trust | 16 | no | yes | yes |
| Pinakothek (Munich) | 14 | no | no | yes |
| Kunstmuseum Basel | 66 | yes | NO | yes |
| Kunstmuseum Bern | 9 -on display or Gurlitt | yes | yes - PDF | yes |
| Metropolitan Museum | 56 | yes | yes | yes |
| MFA | 29 | yes | yes | yes |
| DIA | 21 | NO | yes | yes |
| Harvard Art Museums | 20 | yes | yes | yes-11 |
| Yale Art | 35 | yes | yes | yes |
| Cleveland | 19 | yes | yes | yes |
| Princeton Museum | 6 | yes | NO | yes |
| Emil Bührle Collection | 5 | yes | yes | yes |
| Musée d'Orsay | 1 | yes | yes | yes |
| Rose Art Museum | 4 | yes | no | yes |
Links:
Museum of Modern Art - MoMa (USA)
Query for Picasso (all) 1246 artworks all dates
(659 artworks is an estimation, because the query picks up some other artists as well)
NGA (USA):
MFA Boston (USA)
UK Collections Trust:
Pinakothek (Munich)
Museums in Denmark
Rose Art Museum (USA)
* no provenance information *
Jun 3, 2023
Advisory Commission on the Return of Cultural Property Seized as a Result of Nazi persecution: recommendations in searchable text
This is a searchable text-only copy of recommendations originally published by the Advisory Commission on the return of cultural property (Beratende Kommission NS-Raubgut)
- Robert Graetz
- Kurt and Else Grawi
- Heinrich Rieger
- Max Fischer
- Dr. and Mrs. Max Stern
- Max J. Emden
- Max und Margarethe Rüdenberg
- Felix Hildesheimer
- Alfred Salomon
- Alfred Flechtheim
- Ludwig Traube
- Eduard L. Behrens
- Clara Levy geb. Isaak
- J.S. Goldschmidt, I. Rosenbaum und Z.M. Hackenbroch
- Paul Westheim
- Alexander Lewin
- Julius und Clara Freund
May 27, 2023
Using ChatGPT to detect language indicating uncertainty in provenance texts
In this conversation with the AI ChatBot, I asked it to look at the provenance text for Picasso's Woman with Pears, at the MoMa.
The provenance text on MoMa's website is:
[Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris and/or Ambroise Vollard, Paris and/or Galerie Thannhauser, Munich]
By September 7, 1919 (1912 or 1913?) - at least October 1932, Alfred Flechtheim and/or Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf, Berlin and London.
By February 1934(?) - March 1937, The Mayor Gallery and/or Douglas Cooper, London.
March 1937, Pierre Matisse Gallery (consignment no. 882, stock no. 594), New York, purchased from “Cooper”.
March 31, 1937 - June 2, 1955, Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., New York, purchased from Pierre Matisse Gallery.
June 2, 1955 - 1996, Florene May Marx (1903-1995, later Schoenborn) and Samuel A. Marx (1948–1964), Chicago, purchased from Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. through M. Knoedler & Co. (consignment no. 4786), New York.
1996, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired as bequest from Florene May Schoenborn.
I asked ChatGPT to break the provenance text into sentences and to identify any indications of uncertainty or speculation in each. Then I requested that it present the results in a table.
(I requested that it view "and/or" as uncertain.)
| Sentence | Indications of Uncertainty or Speculation |
|---|---|
| [Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris and/or Ambroise Vollard, Paris and/or Galerie Thannhauser, Munich] | Indication of uncertainty in the gallery names |
| By September 7, 1919 (1912 or 1913?) - at least October 1932, Alfred Flechtheim and/or Galerie Flechtheim, Düsseldorf, Berlin, and London. | Uncertainty about the specific year (1912 or 1913) and presence of "and/or" |
| By February 1934(?) - March 1937, The Mayor Gallery and/or Douglas Cooper, London. | Uncertainty about the specific date (February 1934) and presence of "and/or" |
| March 1937, Pierre Matisse Gallery (consignment no. 882, stock no. 594), New York, purchased from "Cooper." | None |
| 1996, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired as bequest from Florene May Schoenborn. | None |
Then I asked ChatGPT:
what is the first year for which there is solid information
ChatGPT replied:
The first year for which there is solid information in the given text is 1937.
May 16, 2023
Looted art: I asked ChatGPT for assistance writing code in R to classify 20,000 artworks
I asked ChatGPT for help writing a program in R to classify whether an artwork is ok, a forgery, or Nazi loot. What do you think of the result?
May 1, 2023
Detecting looted art and forgery with help from ChatGPT
Formulating questions for an AI Chatbot can be a good way to clarify issues and methodologies.
In the conversation below, I ask ChatGPT for help in detecting patterns in the false provenances of looted art and forgeries that have been identified and debunked. ChatGPT reformulates the questions and adds some insights that can be useful.
(Introduction to a series on analyzing provenance with ChatGPT)
Can you help me to detect looted art and forgery?
Apr 16, 2023
Frank Perls and Degas posthumous art
"the posthumous impressions from his canceled plates by the Frank Perls Gallery began after 1939 some twenty-two years after Edgar Degas' death in 1917."
"Edgar Degas died in 1917. The ten so-called "sculptures in bronze" and "etchings" in the Denver Art Museum's February 11 to May 2018 Degas: A Passion for Perfection exhibition were posthumously cast and impressed after 1919 till as late as 1981, some 2 to 64 years after Edgar Degas' death in 1917."
read full article :
Degas: A Passion for FAKES at the Denver Art Museum
GARY ARSENEAU
***
Related reading:
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/152785/the-lecturer-le-lecteur
http://garyarseneau.blogspot.com/2013/03/degas-forgeries-bait-and-switch-at.html
http://garyarseneau.blogspot.com/2013/03/degas-forgeries-bait-and-switch-at.html
Feb 20, 2023
Tracking Looted Art 2: Sothebys Sales of Restituted Artworks as Data
The provenances of artworks restituted to Jewish families plundered by Nazis contain valuable information for the art historian and Holocaust scholar.
Questions:
- Which transactions occur between the seizure/sale under the Nazis and the restitution?
- Which names appear in these transactions?
- How often do they appear?
This post looks a a simple method for identifying the names of these buyers and sellers for further analysis. In this example, we look at the provenances of artworks sold at Sothebys after they were restituted to their original owners or their heirs.
Dec 23, 2022
Van Gogh in the Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal
The Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal, published by the American Alliance of Museums, currently lists 29,874 objects from 179 participating museums.
A search for Van Gogh returns 73 objects listed by US museums.
How many of these artworks have complete, unambiguous and accurate provenance for the years 1933-1945?
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