RECOVERING OBJECT BIOGRAPHIES

Rosemary Joyce, a museum anthropologist and Mesoamerican archaeologist, visualizes provenance as a series of coordinates along an object’s itinerary, each of which privileges different research agendas. She stresses the concept of cultural biography, which can help to bridge the divide among disciplines and how each understands the term. ^{Footnote 3} Taking provenance in its broadest sense, she extends the trajectory from the sourcing of materials and creation to an object’s use, deposition, and modern afterlife. Within this life span, the archaeological find-spot constitutes a discrete segment. Cultural biography acknowledges the multiple communities that have a stake in antiquities. Their interests, methods, and findings are interdependent. Analysis by scientists and conservators can tell us from where the raw materials that were used to make an object were extracted, how it was manufactured, and what deterioration occurred subsequently; in some cases archeometric data can narrow the realm of potential origins. Excavation establishes the function, date, and meanings of objects and any associated features and artifacts. Embedding things in a specific geographical matrix and time period conveys the precision that guarantees authenticity and supports historical interpretation. Far from merely describing a superficial affinity, style reflects artistic personalities and their creative processes. It informs seriation and design, the pillars on which typologies and chronologies of ancient material culture rest. ^{Footnote 4}

Marlowe’s insistence on paying attention to documented origins rather than to inference or rumor will find no argument here. Her assertion that the archaeological find-spot should be the sole criterion of an object’s “reality,” however, is debatable (at 229). She is concerned that there are harmful consequences to studying, publishing, and teaching works of ancient art that are not connected to an excavation. This stance is an article of faith among some archaeologists but should be rejected. Objects are not fixed entities; they are always “on the move” and mutate as they inhabit different social settings. Failure to investigate them holistically diminishes their scientific, artistic, and cultural values beyond the final archaeological moment and hampers the prospects of uncovering clues about their backgrounds.

Professional archaeology is a recent phenomenon by comparison with the long-standing antiquarian tradition. Restricting study to grounded examples not only strands objects that have stories to tell but also cordons off countless others that are significant works of ancient art in their own right. Recent antiquities collections would be segregated, but so too would be innumerable collections formed between the Renaissance and the twentieth century. Should one really exclude from the curriculum a large percentage of European and North American museum holdings of antiquities, whose excavation records have been lost or languish unpublished? Epistemologically, best practices call for an inclusive life story, not least because it can fill gaps in fragmentary narratives. All available tools should be used to understand the physical remains of the past, casting a skeptical eye on conventional wisdom and unverified claims. Projects that trace ownership histories and find-spots are proving to be extremely worthwhile, a point to which I will return shortly.

SHAKY GROUNDS

First, a word on methodology. Building on their seminal work on the consequences of lost contexts due to the illicit trade in Cycladic marble figures, Gill and Chippendale reveal the meager percentage of archaeological contexts recorded in seven catalogues published in the 1990s: three exhibitions dedicated to private collections (the Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman collection, the Shelby White and Leon Levy collection, and the George Ortiz collection) and four thematic displays that included substantial numbers of objects from private collections. ^{Footnote 5} Marlowe demonstrates that their categorizations undervalue legitimate stylistic analogies and are occasionally overly generous or inaccurate. Assessing the degree to which provenance rests on solid foundations promises a more impartial way to identify an object and vouch for its legitimacy. Spotlighting collections of recent vintage was intended as an indictment of acquisition practices. Using those same catalogues to quantify groundedness (and to critique curatorial practice), however, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In Marlowe’s Appendix B, two more recent catalogues from the Art Institute of Chicago and Fordham University are analyzed. Both present many privately owned objects, and it comes as no surprise that they are also thin when it comes to archaeological information. A third, the 2013–14 international exhibition Augusto, drew together some 200 iconic, well-documented works from the great European public collections and stands in a league apart from the others. Needless to say, catalogues of exhibitions that center on specific sites, cultures, and genres of ancient art could have been chosen that would have produced more encouraging results. Of the hundreds of exhibition catalogues on the ancient Mediterranean world published over the last 25 years, those whose main purpose was to showcase a private collection are a distinct minority.

Does the absence of provenance information in a catalogue tombstone or gallery label—or, for that matter, in academic monographs—mean that none exists or that origins have not yet been fully researched? Marlowe is right to call for a clear accounting of what is known or can be reasonably inferred. When objects have been disconnected from excavated find-spots, the next best step is to frame them by reference to archaeologically valid comparisons. The exhibition catalogues that Chippindale and Gill analyze are obviously lacking in this respect. One problem is the practice of organizing exhibitions around privately owned antiquities, when there is no overarching theme beyond the taste and opportunities of the collector. The reality is that few concerted efforts have been made to investigate the foggy origins of many antiquities in museum collections and to make this information public.

Marlowe considers the catalogue Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome as “radically incomparable” to those typically published in the 1990s, but a closer look shows that the caption information cannot be taken at face value. ^{Footnote 6} Sicily was a companion volume to a 2013 exhibition of the same title. Not all of the objects in the book were shown at the museum venues. Most were chosen by the authors of the essays, which oriented toward history and archaeology. By my rough count, 70 percent of the 141 objects illustrated (excluding those still on site) are grounded and 30 percent are ungrounded or are “said to be” from a place. In the exhibition, by contrast, 47 percent of the 141 objects on display were grounded in a general location or specific excavation site and 6 percent were “said to be” from the region but seemed credible. About 46 percent were ungrounded, comprising 57 objects with a pre-1970 provenance (the great majority coins) and 10 with a post-1970 provenance. If establishing groundedness through a generic attribution to a city or region is considered informative, then 52 Sikeliote coins hailing from nineteenth-century collections could fall into the plausible “said to be” column because they were minted in, and circulated mainly around, Sicily (but not exclusively). Such broad-brush criteria would not satisfy archaeologists and numismatists, who rely on the critical information supplied by coins found in situ.

Even knowing this material well, it is not always feasible to launch an exhaustive inquiry into the archaeological find-spots that over time attach to older finds. Digging deeper, grounding is a point of departure, and other scholarly tools inevitably must be brought to bear to shape an interpretation. For instance, the Biscari kouros head’s discovery in Lentini is mentioned in an eighteenth-century Latin inventory, but corroborating evidence that it joins a torso uncovered outside Lentini in 1902 (based on hearsay) was invalidated when the two pieces were juxtaposed in the exhibition and understood not to belong together. ^{Footnote 7} Similar issues surround the bronze Herakles statuette, which was found in a riverbed in Contrada Cafeo, Modica, near a possible sanctuary where it must have once stood but not in an archaeological stratum. While it is a useful hint to know that something was probably found in the vicinity of a site, it is more enlightening to pin it down. Local religious rituals were brought to life by a votive statuette of Demeter displayed alongside a small jug of carbonized seed offerings, both from the north room of Building XII on the acropolis of Gela. By contrast, the discovery of the unparalleled sculpture of a charioteer amid the rubble of a defensive berm on Mozia secured its temporal and geographical coordinates. This secondary or tertiary reuse informs us of its fate, but less so of its creation, cult identity or civic role, and original context—for that we need to bring in marble analysis, sculptural style, and literary sources to compose likely narratives. ^{Footnote 8}

By unpacking the Sicily exhibition object list in this granular way, my intention is to second Marlowe’s call for archaeologically fixed commentary as well as for complete collecting histories. But I also want to underscore the challenges of parsing ambiguous records. What our exercises make patently clear is that systematic research on the provenances of classical antiquities is largely just beginning. Should works of art with faulty or missing documentation be studied and taught? By all means, so long as the evidence is evaluated objectively and the “said to be” information is taken cum grano salis. Notably, several Sicily objects formerly of unknown provenance and find-sites—the Morgantina silver treasure, to be precise—joined the ranks of their grounded fellows, due only to the fact that they had been displayed and published. ^{Footnote 9} Grounding ancient art and artifacts in archaeological contexts must be refined and expanded because what we value when we talk about provenance depends on the questions being asked.

TRACING PROVENANCE

Posting the chain of custody for works of art online forges ahead at several institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Auction catalogues more regularly cite ownership history, which brings a premium on the art market. ^{Footnote 10} Collecting has been the province of those who study the history of museums, display, the socio-political roles of art, and the influence of antiquity on later generations of artists. This field is enjoying a surge now that more primary sources are being digitized, and, consequently, there is a rich bibliography. Provenance took on greater urgency due to the need to document potential acquisitions prior to 1970. It is a required element of due diligence, both to establish good title and to assure that works of art considered cultural patrimony have not been illegally exported or imported, pillaged from monuments or archaeological sites, or stolen during World War II. Questions still surround numerous works of art acquired between 1970, the date of the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the adoption of policies (mainly in the 2000s) that acknowledge this “bright line.” ^{Footnote 11}

Provenance research involves collating internal records, checking references to sales catalogues, inventories, and antiquarian publications, and deciphering inscriptions and labels that sometimes adhere to artifacts. Having to contend with poor record keeping and eccentric attributions helps develop an intuitive grasp of the antiquities trade and the personalities that operate within it. Often the trail goes cold before the most recent purchase. Links to alleged locations can be frustratingly ambiguous. Archaeological find-spots will remain obscure until new information emerges, dealers’ records are released to public scrutiny, and archives become searchable online. Among the challenges is the fact that although there are abundant publications and databases for individual collectors and genres (classical sculpture, gems, coins, Greek and South Italian vases, and so on), there is no parallel effort so far to track provenances of ancient art as has been undertaken for European paintings and Holocaust-era assets. Assembling structured information (“large data”) would enable complex queries, visualizations, and insights into the ecosystems of antiquities markets. ^{Footnote 12}

Recent investigations of objects in the Getty Villa collection, for instance, show how productive a focused project can be. Several antiquities supplied with minimal data at the time of acquisition actually led unsuspected earlier lives: ^{Footnote 13}

• • Bear hunt mosaic (72.AH.76), acquired in 1972 on the Swiss art market. Archives in the Naples Archaeological Museum record the pavement’s unearthing in Baiae near the so-called “Stufe di Nerone” in 1901. The Ministry of Public Instruction in Naples authorized its sale by property owner Schiano Muriello in 1902. ^{Footnote 14}

• • Etruscan cinerary urn (71.AD.293), acquired from Royal Athena Galleries in 1971. Research uncovered a catalogue entry for the urn at Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles, which received it by exchange with the Ministry of Culture in Rome in 1963, from the collection of Evan Gorga (1865–1957). Three other urns decorated with the same scene, all found in Chiusi, offer grounded comparisons. ^{Footnote 15}

• • Three votive heads (71.AD.304, .305, and .306), acquired from Royal Athena Gallery in 1971. Archival documents reveal that the terracotta heads had been placed on long-term loan at the Smithsonian in 1894 by Elizabeth Magruder, returned to the family in 1965, and sold at auction soon afterward. Grounded siblings from the same mold series have been excavated in Cales and Capua.

• • Venus Genetrix (96.AA.213), gift of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, acquired at Phillips in London on 18 November 1986 (lot 117). The auction catalogue’s vague statement that the torso came “from the bed of a lake in the grounds of a 17^th-century house” could not be verified until the colorful background story surfaced: statuary at Russborough, an eighteenth-century country house in County Wicklow, was damaged during the Anglo-Irish Civil War (1922–23). Considered beyond repair, pieces were discarded in a lake, dredged up in the mid-1980s, and sold clandestinely by estate staff. The Russborough provenance verifies that the Venus was bought in Rome by Joseph Leeson, 1st Earl of Milltown (1711–83) on his 1744–45 or 1750 Grand Tour. ^{Footnote 16}

• • Statuette of a draped female, perhaps Selene (96.AB.38), acquired by Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman from Numismatic Fine Arts in Los Angeles in 1987. An inventory card from the Munich Central Collecting Point, 1945–47, reveals its chain of ownership from Hans Posse in Dresden and the Bachstitz Gallery in Den Haag to F.L. van Gans, prior to 1921.

To sum up, intensive archival research has brought to light prior chains of ownership, some of which allude to possible areas of discovery or actual find-spots. Alas, some antiquities with seemingly solid historical provenances do not stand up to such scrutiny. Objects deriving from the Samuel Schweizer and Karl Haug collections, for example, should raise a red flag, since these associations frequently prove to be unverified or fictitious. What our experience makes plain is that provenance research must proceed case by case. Not all apparent dead ends are hopeless. Objects of uncertain backgrounds or from suspect galleries should not be automatically written off as the products of post-1970 looting. Archives are divulging the deeper documentation of fieldwork and collecting during centuries past, and with luck, can add a chapter or two to an object’s life story. ^{Footnote 17}

At the beginning of all life stories is the act of creation, starting with the media and craft traditions through which objects take on form and meaning. Collaborations between conservators, scientists, and archaeologists have focused on sourcing clay, stone, and metal alloys; techniques and tool work; dating and decay; and the telltale handiwork of restorers. ^{Footnote 18} Space does not permit the full consideration that their fundamental perspective warrants, but when it comes to grounding, materiality should be on a par with archaeology. Petrographic analysis of the limestone used for the cult statue of Demeter at Morgantina suggests that it is consistent (or, in the usual parlance, “not inconsistent”) with local limestone from a vein quarried in nearby Ragusa. ^{Footnote 19} Physical evidence is usually needed to reconnect objects with sites. A terracotta head of a god, acquired in 1985 from the Templesman collection, was thought to represent Zeus and to have been made in Magna Graecia. A notation in the acquisition correspondence that it was “said to be from Morgantina” was not given credence at first but later proved to be accurate. A fragmentary curl unearthed in 1978 in the Demeter sanctuary at San Francesco Bisconti (near Morgantina) was published in 2007 and displayed in the archaeological museum in Aidone. ^{Footnote 20} The similarity of the curl and its distinctive blue pigment to the blue-bearded god spurred Sicilian archaeologists, American staff of the Morgantina excavation, and the Getty to collaborate on finding and matching four fragments with the Getty head’s beard and hair. Learning the find-spot demonstrated beyond any doubt that the head belonged to a rare cult statue of Hades, god of the underworld, found in situ with a wealth of votive dedications. ^{Footnote 21}

Beyond pragmatic requirements and scholarly goals, there is an ethical dimension to the concept of grounding. Tracing provenance over the longue durée is essential to a complete knowledge of works of art and artifacts. Museum curators, scientists, conservators, and archaeologists have professional obligations to share the results of their research in collections, the lab, and on site. All antiquities should be in the public domain, regardless of their backgrounds, gaps, and puzzles. From the perspective of someone who has excavated in the field and works in collections and archives, open access is the key. Without transparent cataloguing, publication, and exhibition, little progress will be made toward writing the cultural biographies that works of art and artifacts deserve.