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

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

URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTO8W-KpmI91d_l-l4LAoyp_alzQAPaIFAhug2YbStfvUeWMWqjmeAVtO-E4vA7PrOrzjza7b26s6DH/pubhtml?gid=995287093&single=true

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

Kurt Feldhäusser or Weyhe in provenance of artworks in American museums

Source Url	Title	Artist	Credit Line	Acc Num	Provenance
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/483489	Crouching Woman with Crab	Aristide Maillol | Crouching Woman with Crab | French | The Metropolitan Museum of Art	Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982	1984.433.35	Mr. Bruno and Mrs. Sadie Adriani Bruno and Sadie Adriani, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., [ Buchholz Gallery } [Buchholz Gallery, New York], E. Weyhe Gallery [E. Weyhe, New York, probably on loan to the Whitney Studio, New York, sold in March 1924 to Thayer], [probably on loan to Whitney Studio, sold in March 1924 to Thayer], Scofield Thayer (1924–d. 1982, on extended loan to the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Mass., as part of the Dial Collection, 1936–82, his bequest to MMA), Worcester Art Museum
https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/296387	Madame Fisher | Harvard Art Museums	Diego Rivera, Mexican (Guanajuato, Mexico 1886 - 1957 Mexico City)	Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Meta and Paul J. Sachs	1965.437	Recorded Ownership History;[The E. Weyhe Gallery, New York, New York], sold, to Meta and Paul J. Sachs (L. 2091), Cambridge, Massachusetts, bequest, to Fogg Art Museum, 1965.
https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/225571	Proun 12E | Harvard Art Museums	El Lissitzky, Russian (Pochinok, Russia 1890 - 1941 Moscow, Russia)	Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Association Fund	BR49.303	Recorded Ownership History;Kurt Feldhäusser, Berlin, bequest, to Marie Luise Feldhäusser, 1945, sold, [E. Weyhe Gallery, New York], sold, to Busch-Reisinger Museum, 1949.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/impressionist-modern-art-evening-sale-n09930/lot.22.html	Das Soldatenbad (Artillerymen)	Ernst Ludwig Kirchner		NOTE: Claim for Nazi-looted art and Restitutionto heirs of Alfred Flechtheim	Provenance;Galerie Ludwig Schames, Frankfurt;Alfred Flechtheim, Dusseldorf (acquired from the above in 1919);Städtisches Kunstmuseum, Dusseldorf (acquired by donation in 1928-29);Alfred Flechtheim, Dusseldorf (acquired from the above by exchange in 1930 and left in the custody of his niece, Rosi Hulisch, on his departure from Germany in 1933);Kurt Feldhäusser, Berlin (acquired in 1938);Marie Luise Feldhäusser, Berlin (by inheritance from her son, above, in 1945);Erhard Weyhe Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1949);Mr. & Mrs. Morton D. May, St. Louis (acquired by 1952);The Museum of Modern Art, New York (a gift from the above in 1956);The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (by exchange from the above in 1988);Acquired by restitution from the above in 2018

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

- Spink prov British Museum.csv

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

Query for Picasso before 1945 

(659 artworks is an estimation, because the query picks up some other artists as well)

NGA (USA): 

Query for Picasso created before 1945 

MFA Boston (USA)

Query for Picasso (all)

UK Collections Trust:

 Query for Picasso created before 1945 with gaps in provenance

Pinakothek (Munich)

Query for artworks by Picasso

Museums in Denmark

https://www.kulturarv.dk/kid/SoegKunstnerVaerker.do?kunstnerId=1312

Rose Art Museum (USA)

* no provenance information *

Query for Picasso (all)