Provenance Research: From the Back of the House to the Front of the House
Provenance Research: From the Back of the House to the Front of the House
School of Culture & Creative Arts
Date: Friday 22 February 2019
Time: 16:00 - 17:00
Venue: Kelvin Hall Lecture Theatre, 1445 Argyle Street, Glasgow G3 8AW
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Jane Milosch, Director of the Smithsonian Provenance Research Exchange Program
All welcome at this free, unticketed event.
Refreshments provided in the foyer following the lecture.
Provenance research is an integral museum practice that documents a chain of ownership from the creation of an object to the present. Since the end of World War II the importance of documenting the movement and histories of objects has come more and more into focus for museums, collectors and the commercial art market.
Jane Milosch will introduce the Smithsonian Institution’s role in this area, stressing the need for interdisciplinary and collaborative work and the growing opportunities offered by new online collections documentation, finding aids and linked-open data to share resources. She argues that provenance research should no longer be considered as a dry list of dates and transactions, but instead be at the forefront of connecting histories, cultures and people through objects in a rich and dynamic manner.
Speaker Biography
Jane Milosch established the Smithsonian’s Provenance Research Initiative (SPRI) in order to facilitate WWII-era provenance research across the Institution’s museums and archives. She advises on international cultural heritage projects, provenance, and training programs and developed the Provenance Research Exchange Program (PREP) between the U.S. and Germany, which she currently directs.
She has previously worked as Chief Curator at the Renwick Gallery and Curator at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and Davenport Museum of Art in Iowa. Her research interests include modern and contemporary art, craft, and design, especially the intersections of art, science, design, and new technology.
Jane Milosch is an Honorary Professor of the University of Glasgow.