Veranstaltung

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22.01.2025 - 22.01.2025 | National Museum of Asian Art

Unpacking Provenance | A Chinese Porcelain Cup

The new online series Unpacking Provenance: Retracing the Histories of Asian Art brings together cross-disciplinary specialists to discuss provenance research processes and share resources. Discussions focus on a single object, exploring a variety of innovative, strategic, and collaborative approaches to inquiry.

In the series premiere, a panel of four experts reflect on a Yongzheng-period (1723–1735) porcelain cup in the collections of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. This cup was purchased in 1940 from a private individual whose father reportedly participated in the so-called Boxer War of 1900. Discussants will articulate research questions, brainstorm approaches, and talk through how they would ideally track down answers about both the object’s journey and the life histories of the individuals who encountered it. 
 
Unpacking Provenance is part of a larger collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz that seeks to cultivate the global network of provenance researchers and promote exchange. Previous programs include Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art (2020–2022) and Provenance of Asian Art: A Collaborative Workshop and Symposium (2023).

Generous support for the museum's provenance research and object histories program is provided by the David Berg Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

Speakers include:

Birgitta Augustin, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, National Museums in Berlin (SMB)
Teng Deyong, Palace Museum, Beijing
Thoralf Klein, Loughborough University, United Kingdom
Adriana Proser, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland


Facilitated by:

Joanna M. Gohmann, National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC 
Christine Howald, Zentralarchiv/Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin  

Speaker bios:

Birgitta Augustin (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU) is curator of Chinese art at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, National Museums in Berlin (SMB), where she is in charge of the arts from China from the Neolithic period to the end of the Qing dynasty. Previously, she was a J.S. Lee Memorial Fellow at the National Palace Museum, Taipei; the associate curator of Asian art and acting head of the Department of the Arts of Asia and the Islamic World at the Detroit Institute of Arts; and research associate in the Asian Art Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the SMB, she is a contributing member of the Roundtable Provenance Research in the SMB and the project “Traces of the ‘Boxer War’ in German Museum Collections.” 
 
Teng Deyong holds a PhD in history and is a research fellow at the Palace Museum. His primary research focuses on the history of the Qing dynasty court and related cultural artifacts. He has published a large number of academic papers. During his master's studies, he focused on governance during the occupation of Beijing by the Eight-Nation Alliance, which formed the subject of his thesis.
 
Joanna M. Gohmann (PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is the National Museum of Asian Art’s first curator of provenance and object histories. In this role, Gohmann leads the museum’s provenance program, conducts provenance research across collection areas, and manages the museum’s ongoing collaboration with Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz’s Museum of Asian Art and Central Archives. Gohmann integrates provenance stories into NMAA’s web presence and gallery installations. Her work appears in the exhibition Freer’s Global Network: Artists, Collectors, and Dealers, exploring the influences that shaped how the museum’s founder collected art. Before coming to the Smithsonian, she held positions at the Walters Art Museum, the Offices of Historic Alexandria, the Ackland Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Art. Her scholarship has appeared in various publications, including Eighteenth-Century Fiction and Orientations.  
 
Christine Howald (PhD) is an expert in Asian art provenance research. As deputy director of the Zentralarchiv (Central Archive), she coleads the provenance research team at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. She has published widely and is coeditor of two issues of the Journal for Art Market Studies on Asian Art (2018 and 2020) as well as the publication “em//power//relations: A Booklet on Postcolonial Provenance Research” (2022). Amongst others, she currently runs the research project “Traces of the ‘Boxer War’ in German Museum Collections,” a cooperative project of seven German museums together with the Palace Museum Peking, and she heads a global research and network initiative on provenance and Asian art with the National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian Institution). 
 
Thoralf Klein is reader in Chinese and global history at Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Previously, he taught East Asian history at the University of Erfurt and was a fellow at the College of Cultural Studies, University of Konstanz. His research focuses on themes in modern Chinese history since 1800 and China’s interactions with the world at large. He has published extensively on the Boxer War, focusing on violence, media, and memory. His most recent publications include the edited volume The Boxer War: Media and Memory of an Imperialist Intervention (2020). 
  
Adriana Proser is Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Quincy Scott Curator of Asian Art and chief curator at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She holds a PhD in Chinese art and archaeology from Columbia University. She was John H. Foster Senior Curator at Asia Society Museum prior to joining the Walters and assistant curator of East Asian prior to that at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has organized and co-organized more than forty exhibitions featuring diverse works from all over Asia. At the Walters Art Museum, where Proser has been on staff for the last five years, she was lead curator for the “Across Asia and the Islamic World” galleries. Proser has been editor for and contributor to many publications, including most recently Across Asia and the Islamic Word: Movement and Mobility in the Arts of East Asian, South and Southeast Asian, and Islamic Cultures (The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in association with D. Giles Limited, 2023). At the Walters, Proser serves as liaison between staff, the administration, and the board on provenance issues.

Hinweise zur Teilnahme:
Free. Register in advance (required)

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