Invitation to Cleveland Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art has just hired a full-time “provenance researcher“. Obviously, one of the key objects she will be looking at is the Cleveland Apollo Sauroktonos, "from an old East German collection" which, as David Gill points out ("Focus on Apollo") will be going on show later on this year. If she likes, I'd like very much to invite their provenance researcher to come over and have a look with me at the farm in whose garden the Cleveland's provenance has it lying in the bushes  ("I Found it in My Garden", PACHI Monday, 21 June 2010). Perhaps we could get permission from the landowner to take some soil samples for example to compare with the soil in the object's corrosion products. Then we could pop along to the provincial conservator's office and ask to see their inventorisation of the complex and in the unlikely event that the Sauroktonos is not in their records as part of its appurtenances, ask why they did not notice the life-size bronze sculpture in the bushes until 1994. Or just ask some of the local kids. I'll pay for the petrol.