New journal: Transfer – Zeitschrift für Provenienzforschung und Sammlungsgeschichte | Journal for Provenance Research and the History of Collection
Archiv / Nr. 1 (2022) is now out. The editors are Ulrike Saß, Florian Schönfuß and Christoph Zuschlag. It has got a whole lot of stuff, including antiquities (Brodie and Yates addressing some myths on antiquities in money laundering). Most of the articles are very short, so this is not the vehicle for the publication of larger pieces of research on the flow of antiquities through the market, but certainly it is good to get this important area of research in the movement of artefacts through the market and collectors' hands properly studied. Too long have we simply shrugged shoulders at the obfuscations of the market (those myriad "anonymous Swiss collections" "property of a London gentleman", "private Chicago collection, 1970s-1989"), now let us see what treating Sammlungsgeschichte seriously can produce.
In the context of the "art trade", I am not sure the short title is particularly helpful. Some of the journal's articles deal with paintings. In the world of paintings the name 'transfer' means a specific treatment of the painted surface which further complicates (in more ways than one) the issue of 'provenance' and 'collecting history' - indeed introduces a separate issue, the production of artefacts/antiquities by laboratory manipulation ("restorifacts"?). An example might be turning the floor of a house into a tessellated panel of bits of stone called an ancient mosaic - when it is nothing of the kind (also called a 'transfer'). The same goes for physically splitting the various paint layers of a repainted panel painting producing several different items from the first, what is their provenance? With archaeological artefacts, we have situations like the dissolving of cartonnage to make pieces of papyrus, with the rest flushed down the sink. This is a quite different issue from artefacts moving from collection A to B to C with a bit of tarting up and stabilisation on the way.
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