Ariadne’s Thread: The Forensic Art of Provenance

Date & time

Tue 18 Mar 2014, 3–6pm

Location

Lecture Theatre 6, Manning Clark Centre #26A, Australian National University

Image shown above by Gryffindor (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Anne Halpern, Senior Provenance Researcher for the National Gallery in Washington

Joint Seminar hosted by School of Literature, Languages & Linguistics and Centre for Art History & Art Theory

The provenance, or ‘biography’, of an artwork or object is a hierarchical form of classification inextricably linked to ownership. The provenance of a work documents the history of its materiality in the world and begins, for instance, with the first mark on paper, in clay, on wood, in stone, textile, or plastic. Provenance is used to ascribe or deny value: to an individual, to a collection, to a political state or a nation.

Anne Halpern is a provenance researcher with the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C. She will deliver an informal discussion at the ANU on the challenges of her work as a provenance researcher with one of North America’s foremost museums.

A graduate of Earlham College, Indiana, and of the museum studies program at the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto, Ms Halpern began work as a registrar with the NGA in Washington in 1982. She has been responsible for recording the gallery’s paintings, sculptures and decorative arts in the Department of Curatorial Records since 1991. Halpern also couriers important artworks from Washington to major galleries around the world.

She is in Australia this month to deliver and oversee the installation of a long-term loan of a painting by Barnett Newman, to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, which may soon be seen on exhibition.