Rachel Goldstein is an Art History graduate student. She is researching the provenance of artworks in the University of St. Thomas’ Art Collection for her graduate assistantship.

As the first Department of Art History Provenance Research Assistant, I have been honored to help organize and articulate what provenance means to the University of St. Thomas. I was introduced to the idea of provenance as a young child living in England. My parents are avid silver and antique collectors who opened the world of hallmarks and provenance to me. Like a painting with a noted provenance, a piece of silver carries a hallmark, which indicates its purity, origin, and manufacture. Later on I experienced provenance through my work at a family owned and operated auction house where I learned how an object gains value and what makes an object valuable. My third experience with provenance was working at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD, Dresden State Art Collections) in Dresden, Germany. The SKD prides itself on being at the forefront of international provenance research and collaboration. I was lucky to have a front row seat to the new and innovate aspects of provenance research and study within the international realm.

My assistantship at St. Thomas began with my reading of the American Alliance of Museum’s Guide to Provenance Research. Currently considered the bible of provenance research, this book examines the large responsibility one has when researching the provenance of a work of art or artifact of historical importance. The book also outlines best museum practices, which information to include, whether written or digital, within the records of provenance and what an object can tell you about its history.

After studying the book, I began to search the websites of local, national and international museums, and cultural institutions to discover what provenance information and data the museums were availing to the public on the Internet. This activity was to give me a better understanding of what terminology is used, the presentation of written provenance, and allowed me to gain an understanding of how much provenance information is disseminated to the public.

It was then time to begin my provenance research. To begin, the curator allowed me to choose one artwork out of five possibilities from the University’s Art Collection. I chose Fantail Pigeon, 1953 by Milton Avery. It is a woodblock print in black and brown on Japanese rice paper and is the 24th print of 25 in its series. The first task was to study the piece and record its physical characteristics: size, condition and subject. After recording these findings on a form, I started to and am still researching Milton Avery, his career, the history and creation of Fantail Pigeon and the other woodblock prints in the Fantail Pigeon series.

I was able to find the Milton Avery Papers in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. These ‘Papers’ are digitized files which were donated to the Smithsonian by Milton Avery’s widow Sally Avery, an artist whose artwork we also posses in the collection at UST. I have been taking notes and studying these archives in order to understand the conditions of Avery’s work, the dissemination of his work and his relationships to the gallery owners who sold his works and museum curators who organized exhibitions of his work. I am still in the process of finishing this part of my research. Provenance research can be slow at times, but it allows you to delve into the interesting and colorful world of the artist.