Welcome Message
The Center for Art Collection Ethics (ACE) at the University of Denver (DU) is pleased to announce a fully virtual training program on the fundamentals of Nazi-era art provenance research, August 2-6, 2021. Our program is geared toward graduate students in any field and emerging museum professionals, with sessions available to the broader public. We will offer a postgraduate certificate of completion to twenty students through an application process, with full scholarships provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. In addition, non-certificate students and other attendees may register at daily rate of $30. On Thursday, August 5, the daily non-certificate registration rate is $15, as half of the day is devoted to assisting certificate students with research projects. Our planning team includes Renée Albiston, Associate Museum Director of Kirkland Museum Fine & Decorative Art, who also has conducted provenance research at the Denver Art Museum; Elizabeth Campbell, Associate Professor of History at DU and Director of ACE; Angelica Daneo, Chief Curator and Curator of European Art before 1900 at the Denver Art Museum; and MacKenzie Mallon, Specialist, Provenance, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Program Summary
The program includes:
Interactive lectures and discussions with top historians, provenance researchers and museum staff, with break-out groups to allow smaller group discussions. Virtual visits to the University of Denver and the Denver Art Museum collections, followed by live Q&A sessions with the curators and provenance researchers. Object case studies illustrating ownership evidence on the back of painting frames. Information on archival resources in the United States and abroad featuring Meike Hopp, Professor for Digital Provenance at the Technische Universität Berlin. Presentations of digital resources including the ERR Jeu de Paume database and the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project, by Marc Masurovsky. A roundtable on legal and ethical dimensions of Nazi-era art stewardship, including Nicholas O’Donnell, attorney at Sullivan and Worcester in Boston. Perspectives from claimants themselves, including Simon Goodman, descendant of Fritz Gutmann and author of "The Orpheus Clock." Interactive workshops on writing provenance narratives, essential information, and making findings public, featuring Jacques Schumacher, Provenance and Spoliation Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. For certificate students: small group work on provenance research case studies using digital resources, and presentation of findings through a symposium the final day of the program. Keynote address by Jane Milosch, Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of Glasgow and former Founding Director of the Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative, and the PREP exchange program of German and American curators: “A Decade of International Provenance Research and Exchange at the Smithsonian (2009-2019): Looking Back, Looking Forward.”
