Workshop: Provenance Research on East Asian Art

Appel à contribution pour le premier atelier international de recherche sur la translocation ​des objets chinois, japonais et coréens à l’Europe. Il aura lieu les 8  et 9 novembre 2019 au Musée d’art asiatique de Berlin (Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) en coopération avec l’Université de Glasgow.

The collecting of art and artefacts from East Asia has been in vogue in the Western world for hundreds of years with the forced opening of China, Japan and Korea from the mid-19^th century onwards, creating a market boom that resulted in thousands of objects entering collections worldwide. China in particular, during the first three decades of the 20^th century, became subject to the most intensive spate of collecting on the part of museum institutions and private collectors.

In the past 20 years, the movement of these objects and the circumstances of their translocation have been increasingly the focus of curators and scholars investigating purchases related to the politics and market mechanisms under the Nazi regime.

Despite research and numerous projects, we still do not know enough about the destiny of significant private collections dispersed between 1933 and 1945, the acquisition policies of museums at this time and the key actors and institutions involved in the art market for East Asian art in the first half of the 20^th century.

The current international debates around the handling of objects that found their way into museum collections in connection with the colonial period present new challenges for collecting history and provenance research. This includes the revaluation of historical contexts, the reconstruction of looted and displaced collections in East Asia and the layout of a legal or ethical framework to address these issues.

Since 2017, German scholars and museum professionals have been meeting annually in Berlin in order to discuss challenges in researching the provenance of objects originating from East Asia, present current projects and discover similarities in collecting practices and object biographies. During these meetings, a strong wish to connect with colleagues from Europe and abroad has been articulated.

This year’s workshop is open to international colleagues. It aims to create a platform for the exchange of ongoing research in the field and connect colleagues from around the world in a sustainable network.

We welcome papers focusing on the following topics:

• The translocations of objects from East Asia abroad during the colonial era
• Case studies related to objects or collections that have been unlawfully confiscated during the Nazi era
• Actors in the field of dealing and collecting the arts from East Asia that have influenced several museum collections
• Methods in researching the provenance of East Asian art

Conference language is English.

Papers should be of 20 minutes in length maximum. Please send proposals (max. 300 words) with a short academic CV to c.howald@tu-berlin.de by 15 June 2019 at the latest. Selected speakers will be notified by 15 July 2019 (a maximum of 12 papers will be selected for presentation).

Convenors                  

• Dr. Alexander Hofmann (Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
• Dr. Christine Howald (Technische Universität Berlin)
• Prof. Dr. Nick Pearce (University of Glasgow)