Lea Grüter

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Lea Grüter is a provenance specialist at the Rijksmuseum, where she has worked since 2017, focusing on acquisitions made after 1933. With academic training in art history, French, critical museology, and heritage studies from Göttingen, Paris, and Amsterdam, she specializes in the confiscations and restitution of cultural objects expropriated as part of the Holocaust. Her research examines the moral, political, and societal dimensions of provenance, with particular attention to the memorial challenges of past mass violence, genocide and the ongoing impact of historical absences.

To Those Who Will Come After: The Parrhesia of Traces – Confronting What We Are Forgetting

“The contradictions are our hope.” – Bertolt Brecht

This presentation explores provenance research as a means to engage with loss, absence, and the societal dynamics of Nazi-perpetrated “thefticide” (theft as part of genocide) of cultural objects. It introduces the concept of the Parrhesia of Traces, emphasizing the need to listen carefully to traces attached to objects – not as fixed narrative, but as multi-layered remnants of a lost world. By distinguishing between traces of people – active participants in a diverse world whose full stories can never be fully reconstructed – and traces of societal crime that erased them, we uncover patterns of absence and ongoing power imbalances. This approach challenges us to recognize both the presences of absence and the structures of crime.

Provenance research becomes a tool for confronting these absences, not merely as history, but as ongoing encounters with traces in the present. They invite us to question our own frameworks of memory, confront contradictions, and open ourselves to humility and reflection, understanding that the gaps and silences in provenances are where new learning and connections related to aspects of the Holocaust can emerge. Only through ongoing reflection on how we engage with traces can we truly confront and challenge the societal crime and its enduring implications.

Christoph Zuschlag

Bonn University
Christoph Zuschlag studied Art History, History and Archaeology at the Universities of Heidelberg and Vienna. Following internships in museums in Berlin, Vienna, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, he started his academic career in 1991 as Assistant Professor at the University of Heidelberg. He has held positions at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Koblenz-Landau, and has been a guest professor at universities in New Zealand, the USA and Poland. Since 2018, he is the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Chair for modern and contemporary art with a focus on provenance research and the history of art collecting at the University of Bonn. His main research interests are modern and contemporary Western art, provenance research and the history of art collecting as well as art and art policy in Nazi Germany.

Provenance Research: International Developments in the Last Decades and Future Challenges
This lecture explores the historical and epistemological dimensions of provenance research, focusing on recent developments since the Second World War and the Washington Principles. It examines the findings of the Holocaust-Era Looted Cultural Property: A Current Worldwide Overview report, published in March 2024 by the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and the Claims Conference, which addresses Nazi-looted art and the restitution policy of cultural property globally. It also outlines future challenges, not only in the area of Nazi-looted property, but also with regard to cultural property acquired by Western collections through colonialism. Finally, the question of what contribution provenance research can make to the methodological development of art history is addressed.

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.

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.