Artistic Provenance Research

Proposing the new term Artistic Provenance Research the book reveals art's capacity to expand provenance research in critical and provocative ways.

What can art and artists bring to researching the origins and biographies of objects? How do they shed new light on - or even unsettle - existing approaches to such questions? Proposing the new term - artistic provenance research - the contributors to this innovative book illuminate art's capacity to expand provenance research in critical and provocative ways. Artists, anthropologists and curators offer perspectives on a recent artwork that implicates human remains, potential histories and the politics of visibility. Through theorizing historical and contemporary examples, contributors explore knowledge-imagination dynamics, and the transformative potentials of artistic provenance research.

Auteur

Tal Adler is a conceptual artist and researcher at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He specializes in creating collaborative, long-term projects for social transformation, engaging critically with difficult heritages, conflicts and ethical dilemmas.
Sharon Macdonald is Alexander von Humboldt professor of social anthropology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she directs both the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik and CARMAH (the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage).