Publication of introductory guide to provenance research

Prove­nance re­search has al­ways been part of the canon of meth­ods used in art his­to­ry when it comes to trac­ing the ori­gins of col­lec­tions or ex­am­in­ing ques­tions of at­tri­bu­tion, for ex­am­ple. In the light of cur­rent resti­tu­tion de­bates in par­tic­u­lar, it has gained greater pub­lic vis­i­bil­i­ty as a key dis­ci­pline. Christoph Zuschlag, Pro­fes­sor of Prove­nance Re­search in Bonn, pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive and knowl­edge­able in­tro­duc­tion to the his­to­ry and meth­ods of one of the most con­tro­ver­sial fields of ac­tiv­i­ty in art his­to­ry.

The resti­tu­tion of cul­tur­al prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed as a re­sult of Nazi per­se­cu­tion, the dis­cov­ery of the Gurlitt col­lec­tion, the de­bates sur­round­ing ex­pro­pri­a­tions in the GDR and the for­mer colonies – prove­nance re­search has been boom­ing for sev­er­al years now and has be­come a fo­cus of pub­lic in­ter­est. Prove­nance re­search is con­cerned with con­struct­ing bi­ogra­phies – not of peo­ple, but of ob­jects in their re­spec­tive his­tor­i­cal con­text. This book pro­vides the first in-depth in­tro­duc­tion to this im­por­tant field of art his­to­ry.

Zuschlag, Chr. (2022): Ein­führung in die Prove­nien­z­forschung. Wie die Herkun­ft von Kul­turgut entschlüs­selt wird. Mu­nich: C.H.Beck. 238 pages, 30 il­lus­tra­tions