Provenance Research in Museums
Provenance has always been a crucial aspect of curatorial research, not least because it enabled curators to improve their understanding of the objects in their care and of the networks of collectors and dealers who ushered them into their museums. However, with the 1998 Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets, provenance research underwent a dramatic transformation. It developed into a forensic-style tool for addressing past injustices, dramatically changing expectations in this work. This has placed curators in a difficult position: not only are they supposed to be experts in their area, they are now expected to pursue research outside their chosen field. Reflecting on the status of provenance research within museums today, this presentation will discuss the challenges faced by curators who operate in a realm that presents complex moral and legal questions.

Jacques Schuhmacher

Art Institute of Chicago
Jacques Schuhmacher is the Executive Director of Provenance Research at the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, he worked as Senior Provenance Research Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He is an expert on Nazi-era provenance research. At the V&A, he has worked on the Nazi-era provenance of the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, which culminated in the provenance display ‘Concealed Histories: Uncovering the Story of Nazi Looting’, the first of its kind in a UK museum. Additionally, he contributed to various digitization projects and a number of restitution and repatriation cases. Before joining the V&A Schuhmacher worked as a researcher for the Commission for Looted Art in Europe and was Co-Director of the War Crimes Research Network at the Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities. In 2024, his book Nazi-Era Provenance of Museum Collections: a research guide, was published.