Nazi-era art provenance research training program.

The Center for Art Collection Ethics (ACE) at the University of Denver (DU) is pleased to announce a hybrid training program on the fundamentals of Nazi-era art provenance research, June 18–23, 2023. In partnership with DU’s Center for Professional Development, our program is geared toward graduate students in any field and emerging museum professionals, with selected streamed sessions available to the broader public. We will offer an on-campus postgraduate certificate of completion to twenty students through an application process, with generous support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. In addition, non-certificate students and other attendees may register to attend selected sessions virtually.

Our planning team includes Renée Albiston, Associate Museum Director of Kirkland Museum Fine & Decorative Art, who also conducts Nazi-era provenance research at the Denver Art Museum; Elizabeth Campbell, Associate Professor of History at DU and Director of ACE; and MacKenzie Mallon, Specialist, Provenance, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. 

The certificate program includes: 

Interactive lectures and discussions with top historians, provenance researchers and museum staff, with break-out sessions to allow smaller group discussions. 

Workshops on legal and ethical challenges in the stewardship and trade of Nazi-looted art.

A case study of the Paul Rosenberg collection, presented by MaryKate Cleary, Lecturer of Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.

Site visit to the Denver Art Museum, where Renée Albiston will present case studies of pieces she researched, with recto and verso observation of paintings.

Site visit to the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, for a tour of the collection and a discussion on the challenges of researching decorative art objects.

Information on archival resources abroad and in the United States, including streamed presentations by Sylvia Naylor from the National Archives and Records Administration, Megan Lewis at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Anna Bottinelli at the Monuments Men and Women Foundation.

Discussion with Marc Masurovsky, historian and co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, on the long discussed but yet unfulfilled goal of creating a single database of Nazi-plundered art.

Workshops on writing provenance narratives, transparency, and making research public, facilitated by Renée Albiston and MacKenzie Mallon.

For certificate students: small group work on provenance research case studies using digital resources, and presentation of findings during a symposium the final day of the program. 

The week concludes with a streamed keynote address by David Zivie, Head of the Mission for the Research and Restitution of Spoliated Cultural Property between 1933 and 1945, in the French Ministry of Culture.

Applications for the certificate program are due Sunday, March 19, 2023. For more information, please visit https://liberalarts.du.edu/art-collection-ethics/training.