Workshop: HANDS-ON Provenance Research
Foundations, Tools and Practical Examples from the Field of Provenance Research

With Jasmin Hartmann (director, Koordinationsstelle für Provenienzforschung in Nordrhein-Westfalen, KPF.NRW) and Nadine Bauer (provenance researcher, Brücke-Museum)

Any question about an artwork’s origins, its previous owners or locations already gets to the heart of provenance research. Reading and understanding the traces an artwork leaves behind in newspapers, magazines, exhibition catalogues, and letters of people whose hands it has passed through over the course of its existence can offer as many clues about a work’s history as the work itself. These same clues can also provide information about a work’s former owners.

Today, provenance research is particularly engaged with determining whether public museums are the lawful owners of the artworks they exhibit. Special attention is paid to the histories of artworks that were confiscated, sold under duress or disappeared involuntarily in other ways under the National Socialist regime, as well as owners who were persecuted or blackmailed. But how is Nazi-looted cultural property traced and found? And how should we proceed when a Nazi-looted artwork has been identified?

This workshop familiarises participants with the historical and legal frameworks of provenance work, specific possibilities for research as well as documentation standards. With the help of selected case studies, relevant source materials, projects and databases are presented that aim to convey how to acquire basic provenance research skills. Practical exercises provide initial insights into the everyday work of provenance research.

Jasmin Hartmann has directed the Koordinationsstelle für Provenienzforschung in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Coordinating Office for Provenance Research in North Rhine-Westphalia) since 2022. From 2016 to 2021, she established the then newly-founded department of provenance research in Düsseldorf, NRW’s state capital. After studying art history, French philology and applied cultural studies – culture, communication, management – in Münster and Berlin, Hartmann completed her training at the Arbeitsstelle für Provenienzrecherche/-forschung in Berlin, AsKI e.V., a provenance research centre. Later, she held research assistant positions at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne.

Nadine Bauer is a provenance researcher. After studying in Münster, Berlin and Vienna, she completed a traineeship at the National Museums in Berlin and worked at the German Lost Art Foundation in Magdeburg. In 2020, she completed her doctorate on Munich’s Galerie Almas and its involvement in the art trade during the Nazi era. Provenance research at the Brücke-Museum since 2018. From 2021 to 2024 she worked in parallel at the Hamburger Kunsthalle and since March 2024 as a provenance researcher at the Grisebach auction house.

Due to the limited number of participants, please register here for the workshop in advance.
Public activities and events are free with museum admission.
Meeting place: Ticket counter in the lobby.