Provenances. Wayfaring Art

“The works of art migrate. That was and is their destiny, and it will never change.” With this statement, the Berlin art critic Adolph Donath (1876-1937) introduced a description of provenance research as early as 1925. Its task – to uncover the provenance of even the oldest cultural objects – was a matter of course at the time. Anyone who acquired art wanted to know the paths it had previously taken. If a work came from a “collection of repute,” its value and also the reputation of the subsequent owners increased. After the Second World War, provenance research lost some of its significance. Between 1933 and 1945, countless collections built up by Jewish citizens had been broken up, and their owners robbed, expelled or murdered by the Nazis. Those who came into possession of the stolen or extorted property shunned questions about its provenance. It was only around the year 2000 that a return to the importance of provenance began: museums began to examine their collections for works that had been stolen from Jewish victims of National Socialism. Since then, it has been an international goal to research the migrations of cultural objects created before 1945. Scholars are working to uncover forgotten or hushed-up provenances. They identify works looted or sold under duress as a result of persecution – so-called Nazi-looted art. This is often an open-ended process. After all, what is the story behind a work, and where are its traces still to be found? At the beginning of a search, only one thing is certain: every work has traveled, and knowledge of its journeys broadens our view of the art. With the support of the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung