Provenance Project

In 2000, the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art established the Provenance Research Project with the assistance of a full-time intern who, under the direction of the Senior Curator, is dedicated to conduct the research in accordance with the Guidelines of the American Association of Museums (AAM) Concerning the Unlawful Appropriation of Objects During the Nazi Era.

Research on the history of ownership, or provenance, of works of art has always been an important part of a curator's work. Knowing the geographic, personal, and commercial route followed by works of art provides valuable insight into the history of collecting. Documenting provenance can also serve as a way of authenticating a work of art as well as be an important means of establishing legal ownership of it. Art historians have always sought to know the identity of previous owners, but such information is often difficult to establish. When a family has owned a painting for several generations there may be no record of sale. Frequently, private collectors prefer to buy and sell works anonymously through dealers or auction houses, whose records may therefore not disclose the true owner. Moreover, many dealers and auction houses that were active in the 19th and 20th centuries are no longer in business and their records may have been lost or destroyed. Thus it is rare to find works of art having a complete history of ownership. It is, therefore, important to bear in mind that gaps in provenance do not necessarily indicate that a work was looted or stolen; however, those that occur during the period from 1933, the date of Adolph Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, and 1945, the end of World War II, are of particular concern because of the possibility that the work of art was involved in activities related to the Nazis. After the war, paintings were either restituted to their original owners or their heirs, or were returned to the country from which they had been looted but not to individuals. The purpose of the Dallas Museum of Art’s research is to determine whether any paintings that have entered the collections could have been seized or stolen and not subsequently returned.

Research Process
The Dallas Museum of Art’s Provenance Research Project began by examining the Museum’s collection of paintings produced in Europe prior to 1945. The following steps were taken to establish priorities for researching the collection:

1. Eliminate from the study those works acquired before 1933, the year Hitler came to power, or created after 1945, the end of World War II.
2. Eliminate those paintings with complete provenances for the period 1933–1945—in other words, those paintings for which the legitimate transfer of ownership from one owner to another could be documented throughout this period.
3. Set aside those paintings with incomplete provenances (a.k.a. gaps) for further study.
4. Review the records of those paintings with gaps in their provenance for the appearance of the names of people known or suspected to have been Nazis or to have had dealings with or to have been victimized by the Nazis.
5. Assign priority for immediate, in-depth research to those paintings that can be connected to any of these names.

Through the ongoing research at the Dallas Museum of Art, 141 works in the collection of the Department of Painting and Sculpture have been reviewed and are confirmed to have safe provenance. There are currently fourty-eight works with research pending. Our future projects include researching the provenance of the works on paper and decorative arts.

Contact for Inquiries or Information on Objects in the Dallas Museum of Art’s Collections:
We invite scholars and the public to help us complete our knowledge. For inquiries and/or information on objects on this list, please contact the Museum at provenance@DallasMuseumofArt.org or send letters to Provenance Research Project, Dallas Museum of Art, 1717 North Harwood St., Dallas, Texas 75201, USA., or visit the Nazi-Era Provenance Internet Portal.