Latest news with #EuropeanFineArtFoundation
Forbes
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
TEFAF New York To Champion Women Artists Across Genres And Geographies
Shirley Jaffe Untitled c. 1967 Oil on canvas 51.13 x 34.63 inches (130 x 88 cm) PRESENTED BY GALERIE ... More NATHALIE OBADIA (STAND 364) Embark on a fast-paced, boldly colored journey of shapes meticulously assembled to create the "organized chaos" of a dynamic urban landscape. The viewer navigates the complex composition, imaging how disparate elements can fit together with frenzy and finesse. Repulsed by the natural landscapes in her earlier paintings, Shirley Jaffe (born 1923, Elizabeth, N.J.; died 2016, Louveciennes, France) sought inspiration from the buzzing cities she encountered alongside her artistic exploration, evolving from Abstract Expressionism to a graphic, geometric style, while preserving the spontaneity and large-scale compositions that evoke emotions and psychological inquiry. Perhaps the circles represent tires and the lines tracks, with elements of a metro map. Though the direct inspiration for Untitled (circa 1967) remains unknown, Jaffe was at the time inspired by the demolition site of the Gare Montparnasse train station in 15th arrondissement of Paris, situated on the left bank of the River Seine. Visitors to the 11th edition of TEFAF New York 2025, which opens to the public between May 9-13 at the Park Avenue Armory, will have the rare opportunity to closely examine each precise brushstroke of this pulsating oil on canvas, evoking the unrivaled vigor of city life, presented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Stand 366). A wide array of masterworks by women artists will be featured at this year's New York engagement of the European Fine Art Foundation's preeminent global art fair. Ninety-one leading dealers and galleries from 13 countries and four continents will showcase rare and pristine examples of Modern and Contemporary art, jewelry, antiquities and design, along with exclusive curated spaces in the Armory's 16 period rooms. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder Representation of women artists is critical at art fairs, and TEFAF New York's commitment to Modern and Contemporary art and design enables a closer focus. The representation of women artists among dealers continues to inch up, climbing by 1% in 2024 to 41%, according to the ninth edition of The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report by Dr. Clare McAndrew, Founder of Arts Economics. Marie Laurencin Jeune Fille au bouquet c. 1935 Oil on canvas Unframed: 18.13 x 14.75 inches (45.9 x ... More 37.5 cm) Framed: 30.75 x 27.63 x 3.38 inches (78.1 x 70.2 x 8.6 cm) An ethereal young woman with a bouquet is depicted in pastel hues, conveying a sapphic modernity. Marie Laurencin's Jeune Fille au bouquet (circa 1935), a highlight of Almine Rech (Stand 322), celebrates the artist's embrace of femininity as empowerment. Laurencin divorced herself from Cubism by the 1910s, joining Natalie Clifford Barney's sapphic salon alongside Sylvia Beach, Tamara de Lempicka, and Laurencin's early patron, Gertrude Stein. The French painter, printmaker, and stage designer (1883-1956) rose to prominence among the Parisian avant-garde as a member of the Cubists associated with the Section d'Or, alongside Sonia Delaunay, Marie Vorobieff, and Franciska Clausen, but cut ties with the movement to hone her distinctive feminine aesthetic foreshadowing the rise of the lipstick lesbian in the 1980s. Anne Imhof Wish You Were Gay Installation view, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, June 8–September 22, ... More 2024 Anne Imhof (born 1978, Giessen, Germany) carves into centuries of art history – exemplifying the scope of TEFAF Maastricht – to draw from antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, and Auguste Rodin in Untitled (Silas) (2024), on view at Sprüth Magers (Stand 306). Imhof's ongoing drawing practice influences her patinated bronze relief depicting two elongated, long-haired, androgynous nude figures, reclining on rocks, grasping each other's oversized hands. Imhof plays with scale, as two breaching dolphins appear slight in the distant right, while a third comparatively miniature figure, stands in the water to the left, grasping a stretched dolphin with outsized hands and draping it over their shoulders like a shawl. The German visual artist, choreographer, and performance artist lives and works between Frankfurt and Paris. Emma Reyes White Poppy 1979 Work on paper 41 x 28 inches (104.14 x 71.12 cm) The white poppy, a symbol of peace and a rejection of the glorification of war (ideology that seems abandoned amid ongoing geopolitical terror), blossoms to portrait status in Emma Reyes' White Poppy (1979). The nearly 3½ tall, over 2-foot wide work on paper appears life sized to a typical child around four years old. A fully bloomed white poppy towers alongside live buds that could be its children, as Reyes' close-up floral imagery amplifies the connection between humans and nature. While urbanites gaze at Jaffe's monumental canvas, naturalists may appreciate Reyes with Leon Tovar Gallery (Stand 366). The Colombian painter and intellectual (1919- 2003) was born in Bogotá and lived in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Jerusalem, Washington, and Rome before settling in Paris, discovering nature within global cities. With single entry tickets starting at $60 ($25 for students, and free for children under 12), TEFAF New York is a genuine immersive experience, offering a comprehensive and intimate look at an array of museum-quality artworks, including some that may be on view for the first time.
New York Times
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
TEFAF Returns With Majesty in an Uncertain Market
A medieval manuscript unseen for 60 years, hand-painted by the renowned French illuminator Jean Pichore and his workshop, is one of the most spectacular exhibits at the 38th annual edition of the TEFAF Maastricht fair, which previewed to invited guests on Thursday. 'This is world history,' said Dr. Jörn Günther, an illuminated manuscript dealer in Switzerland, pointing to an illustration in a book of hours. It is of a trim, young King Henry VIII of England kneeling next to an angel and Catherine of Aragon, the first of his six wives. 'With manuscripts you really can get close to the big figures of the Middle Ages,' Günther said, as one of his staff members leafed through the book with this image, dating from about 1509, which had been owned and handled by Queen Catherine. 'It's different from a portrait. It's more intimate.' Catherine was one of Tudor England's more consequential queens. The failure of Henry and Catherine's marriage to produce a surviving male heir — or an annulment from the pope — resulted in Henry's split from the Church of Rome. The manuscript was priced at 1.4 million Swiss Francs, about $1.6 million. The venerable Dutch event from the European Fine Art Foundation, running through March 20, this year features 273 exhibitors from 21 countries, and is the last remaining major international fair primarily devoted to pre-20th-century art and objects. (TEFAF also holds a smaller sister fair focused on modern and contemporary art in New York in May.) This year's edition faced formidable headwinds. Old masters have fallen out of fashion with private collectors, the international art market is in a slump. President Trump's trade wars have also rattled markets and upended long-held ties between the United States and Europe. 'This is a challenging time in a wider sense,' said Massimiliano Caretto, a partner in the Rome- and Turin-based old master dealership, Caretto & Occhinegro. 'With Trump and the wars, everyone is frightened about everything.' 'But TEFAF is the one event where museums, collectors and dealers gather together and want to buy,' Caretto said. During the first hour of the crowded preview, the Italian gallery had no difficulty in finding an as-yet-undisclosed museum purchaser for a recently rediscovered panel painting of Christ's 'Entombment' by the 16th-century Flemish painter Maerten van Heemskerck. The dealers' research indicates this is the original central image of an altarpiece whose side panels are preserved in the Worcester Art Museum, in Massachusetts. Dating from about 1550, this expressive Italian-influenced Netherlandish painting was priced at 500,000 euros, or about $544,000. In recent years, museums, particularly American ones, have increasingly become the go-to buyers of high-value old masters at TEFAF. The fair has also tried to freshen its appeal by expanding the number of booths showing Modern and contemporary art. This year, some 60 such dealers were exhibiting, including the first-time participant Richard Saltoun from London. Saltoun's singular display of Surrealist paintings and drawings by the Palestinian-born Lebanese artist Juliana Seraphim (1934-2005) was in tune with the desire of many museums to rebalance their collections with works by long-overlooked women artists. Seraphim once said she wanted to portray 'how important love is to a woman,' and her opulent, enigmatic images are suffused with erotic symbolism. A richly layered oil, 'Untitled,' from 1968, marked at €120,000, or about $130,000, was reserved by a museum. The focus of American museums on expanding their works by underrepresented artists continues, even as the Trump administration cracks down on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. James Steward, the director of the Princeton University Art Museum, which is slated to open an expansive new building in October, was one of several American museum directors and curators at the TEFAF preview. Visiting the fair for his 16th time, Steward said, he is always on the lookout for pieces that fill gaps in the holdings of his privately funded institution, particularly those that straddle different cultures. 'We have to double-down on our core values,' said Steward, responding to concerns about the Trump administration's cultural revisionism. 'Diversity is baked into our collections.' 'We have art and objects from all over the world and from across 5,000 years of human history, and we will continue to rebalance our collections with works and artists we think are historically underrepresented,' he said. This time, a 16th-century Flemish painting of the Madonna and Child in a similar-period Japanese black lacquer frame caught Steward's eyes. This rare object, associated with the evangelical activities of Jesuit missionaries in Japan, was priced at €336,000, or about $365,000, at the booth of a London dealer, Jorge Welsh. Several visitors said that though this year's TEFAF still kept up its reputation for offering a wealth of museum-quality items, standout masterworks by major names were fewer and farther between. 'Despite the lack of obvious showstoppers such as we have seen in past years, people were still quietly doing good business and there was a very international crowd in attendance, which makes all the difference,' Morgan Long, a London-based art adviser, said after the preview. Other notable early sales included a mid-17th-century 'Virgin at Prayer With Self-Portrait' by the Flemish artist Michael Sweerts who worked for several years in Rome. This sold to a European museum for about €4 million, or about $4.3 million, from the booth of the Geneva-based Salomon Lilian. Recent restoration had revealed that the painting had been made in Rome while the artist was working for Camillo Pamphili, a noted collector who was the nephew of Pope Innocent X. The London gallerist Ben Brown sold a 2006 supersized golden apple sculpture, 'Pomme (Moyenne),' by the quirky and ever-popular French designer Claude Lalanne to an American collector for a price in the region of $950,000. TEFAF's organizers said that no fewer than 62 groups of museum patrons attended the preview. Among them was a cohort of some 30 patrons of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including Penny Vinik, a collector of contemporary art based in Boston and Florida. 'I usually go to Art Basel,' Vinik said. 'The museum encouraged me to come to Maastricht. I haven't bought anything for a year and didn't expect to fall in love with anything.' But after putting a reserve on a large and joyous 1961 Hans Hofmann abstract painting from the New York gallery Yares Art, which was asking an undisclosed seven-figure sum, she said, 'I love the bright colors. It looks optimistic to me.'
New York Times
04-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
At TEFAF Maastricht, a Class for Curators Demystifies the Art Market
Many major museum curators have Ph.D.s, and yet some are going back to school this month during an art fair in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Last year, the European Fine Art Foundation, the nonprofit organization that puts on the fair, held its first Curator Course. The coming second edition will have 10 participants from museums all over the world, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Hong Kong Palace Museum and the Frans Hals Museum, based in the nearby Dutch city of Haarlem. The five-day course — unusual for an art fair — is intended for what TEFAF calls 'emerging' curators. It includes lectures, panel discussions and mentoring sessions on topics ranging from insuring artworks to negotiating and fund-raising to acquire them, as well as a peek into TEFAF's process for vetting objects. The curators' museums pick up their expenses for the trip; there is no charge for the course itself. The idea is that although curators have expertise about the importance and history of the objects in their charge, some savvy about the buying and selling process is necessary when it comes to making acquisitions for their museums. 'Most curators don't have the opportunity to get involved in the market and learn about it,' said Paul van den Biesen, TEFAF's head of museums and collectors. 'We wanted to bridge that gap.' Van den Biesen conceived of the course. 'We had an informal dinner after one of the board meetings,' he said. 'Someone asked, 'What would your dream for TEFAF be?' And mine was to start a course for curators.' He runs it in partnership with Rachel Pownall, a professor of art and finance at Maastricht University, who leads the course with help from guest lecturers and specialists. She noted that for 2024, there were around 80 applications for the 10 spots. The Maastricht fair is known for attracting the leaders of art institutions. Last year, the fair logged visits from 525 museum directors and 622 museum curators. 'The fair is sold on, 'This is where the museums go to shop,'' said James Rolleston, a London dealer of English furniture and Asian works of art, particularly from China and Japan, who is exhibiting at this year's event. In the 2024 class of the TEFAF Curator Course, some were veterans of the fair and others had never attended it. Katharina Weiler, a decorative arts curator at Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, works with a collection of some 40,000 objects and did the course last year. 'The job is preserving the existing collection, but it also means adding to the collection,' Weiler said. 'What made me curious about the curator course is the insight into the art market and its players, and it gave me deeper insight into those dynamics.' Weiler had been to other art fairs but never to TEFAF Maastricht, and she knew it by reputation as a 'must-go' fair, she said. Weiler was duly impressed, calling it a 'playground of the most magnificent objects, all in one place.' By contrast, Ada de Wit, a curator of decorative art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, has been to every edition of the Maastricht fair since 2010. De Wit formerly worked at the Wallace Collection in London, which does not acquire new work, and it was her 2023 move to the Cleveland museum, which does collect, that made the course attractive. 'I liked talking to dealers about how they see those transactions,' de Wit said. 'It's hard for museums to compete with private buyers, who can move much faster. There's prestige in selling to a museum, but also risk.' De Wit did have some constructive feedback. 'It's a new course but I think they need to fine-tune the program by defining the target group,' she said. 'It wasn't always clear what the experience level of curators was supposed to be.' Overall, de Wit said the course was 'a great initiative,' especially discussions about provenance, the history of an object's whereabouts and ownership. 'That's increasingly important in the art world, especially in the decorative arts,' she said. Tara Contractor, an assistant curator of European painting and sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be getting her first taste of the TEFAF fair as a participant in the course next week. 'I'm pretty new to art fairs,' said Contractor, a British painting specialist whose Philadelphia museum role is her first curator job. She noted that in January she attended New York's Winter Show, a fair with strength in traditional artworks. Even at a major institution like the Philadelphia Museum, her department would likely acquire a very small number of works in a year, she said. But she was already strategizing possible acquisitions from TEFAF, since dealers have already revealed some of their offerings. 'I have my eye on some women artists,' Contractor said. 'That's a priority here these days. There are some works I'm excited by.' She declined to say which ones, lest she tip her hand to the competition. On the last day of this year's course, the curators will make what the fair calls 'acquisition presentations' to Wim Pijbes, formerly the director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and now TEFAF's global chairman of vetting. It is the course's equivalent of a final exam. 'They learn to tell a narrative about how an acquisition will fit a collection,' Pownall, the Maastricht University professor, said. Weiler said that she did not initiate any acquisitions from her time at last year's fair, noting that her museum is a publicly funded one. 'I envied my American colleagues who came with a budget and went on a shopping tour,' she said. 'It's a very competitive market.' But she may have a chance to use some of the skills she learned in the coming months and years, particularly from the acquisition presentation exercise. She has her eye on a 13th-century reliquary casket from Limoges, France, that could be bought in honor of the museum's 150th anniversary in 2027. Weiler, who also intends to be at the Maastricht fair next week, said, 'If you really want something, you have to know how to convince others.'
New York Times
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
TEFAF Maastricht, a Fair Known for Old Masters, Courts Young Collectors
In the art world, getting younger people to look at very old paintings and sculptures has proved challenging. How can a delicate Renaissance sculpture compete with the immediacy of artists posting on Instagram about work they're doing right now? The art fair put on by the European Fine Art Foundation in Maastricht, the Netherlands, has taken some concrete steps to attract younger collectors. The latest edition of the fair will run March 15-20 at the Maastricht Exhibition and Conference Center with 273 dealers on hand. Although the fair is always chockablock with old masters and other artworks made before the 20th century, it has increased the presence of modern and contemporary work over the years — if you can't beat 'em, join 'em — which now comprises around 30 percent of the offerings. 'Because of our participation, and a few other contemporary art dealers, we see more younger collectors at TEFAF every year,' said Nathalie Obadia, a Paris dealer who is showing at the fair for the fourth time. She added that the younger cohort is especially noticeable on the weekend, since those collectors are more likely to have full-time jobs. The booth of her namesake gallery, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, which also has a branch in Brussels, will feature 'Le Dernier Dimanche' ('Last Sunday') (2024), an oil by the French-born painter Johanna Mirabel, and 'The Red, the White and the Blue' (1964), an oil by the American abstract artist Shirley Jaffe, among around 30 works by eight artists. Obadia said that it was precisely the eclectic, centuries-spanning art offered in Maastricht that worked for her, and for younger clients. 'Collectors are really curious to know contemporary art better, and in a way, Art Basel is too specialized,' she said. 'The mix at TEFAF is a great introduction.' It is also a reassuring context for buyers of any age to branch out, Obadia said. A couple of years ago at Maastricht, she noted, an old master collector who does not frequent contemporary art fairs stopped by her booth and ended up buying a sculpture by Wang Keping, a Chinese-born artist who now works in Paris. Other contemporary specialists at this year's fair include Marianne Boesky Gallery of New York and Galerie Lelong & Co., which has headquarters in Paris and a branch in New York. Both are among the 37 first-time exhibitors. As part of the push toward involving younger patrons, fair organizers are emphasizing the pleasures of multigenerational collecting in families with a panel discussion on March 14 featuring Ilone and George Kremer, collectors of Dutch and Flemish old masters, and their son Joël Kremer, who has helped them create a virtual reality museum that allows others to experience their trove of treasures. 'Recently, we launched a web version of the museum on our website, allowing visitors without a VR headset to explore the collection,' Joël Kremer said in an email. 'In addition, we've opened a new virtual gallery space, where we are currently showcasing the 24 works acquired since the museum's launch in 2017.' Another digital innovation had a test run at last year's Maastricht fair and at last year's New York edition of TEFAF, which takes place in May. A select few collectors were offered a special guide to the fair, the Insider's Guide to Collecting — a 'secret map,' said Hidde van Seggelen, chairman of TEFAF's executive committee. Getting access to the digital map — part of TEFAF's Emerging Collector Program, its effort to develop younger buyers — is by invitation only, and galleries decide who can have one. 'The dealers can invite their young clients,' said van Seggelen, who is a contemporary art dealer in Hamburg, Germany. 'They can explore the fair with something that has been curated with them in mind.' The highlights for the new map were curated by the American decorator Remy Renzullo. Van Seggelen added that the selected works were 'at a slightly lower price point' than the most blue-chip pieces, to get across the point of accessibility. Asked what some of the highlights were, van Seggelen kept mum — the first rule of the secret map is, apparently: Don't talk too much about the secret map. One dealer of old master paintings, Patrick Williams of Adam Williams Fine Art in New York, said that he was seeing lots of interest from younger collectors even without a special map. 'TEFAF absolutely has more young and interested people attending, especially New Yorkers,' said Williams, 36, the son of the gallery's founder. 'We're seeing more action from people under 45 since the pandemic,' he added. The gallery has shown in Maastricht for the better part of 30 years, and this year will show around 20 works. In his experience, the subject of an old master painting makes a difference for younger buyers. He said that religious scenes did not sell as well. 'Part of the job is to find more secular imagery,' Williams said. 'Blood, sex and mythology are the themes that are working.' A measure of sex, or at least of flesh, is found in one of the works Williams is bringing, 'Diana and Actaeon' (circa 1615) by the Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens, which depicts a scene of Roman mythology from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.' In the story, Diana, goddess of the hunt, and her nymphs are caught bathing in the forest by the mortal hunter Actaeon. Flustered, she splashes water on him and he is turned into a stag. Later, he is preyed upon by his own hounds and killed. Williams is also bringing 'Portrait of Johan Claesz Loo' (1650) by Frans Hals, among the best-known painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and 'Portrait of a Young Man' (1775) by Élisabeth Vigée le Brun, one of the handful women painters from her era to have made it into the historical art canon. Adam Williams Fine Art has been showing at TEFAF for decades, but a gallery of even longer standing is Vanderven Oriental Art, a specialist in Chinese works of art in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. Vanderven was among the founding galleries of the fair, which held its first edition in 1988. Floris van der Ven, the gallery's director, emphasized how far ahead he worked on fair presentation — he said that he already had some material lined up for the 2026 edition of TEFAF Maastricht. This time, his booth includes a roughly four-foot-tall bodhisattva figure in limestone made during the Northern Qi dynasty some 1,500 years ago. 'It's especially rare in this size,' van der Ven said in a phone call during a visit to New York; he was about to look at some similar works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Van der Ven noted that last year, he sold a comparable piece, also from the Northern Qi dynasty. 'It went to a Chinese collector for roughly $800,000,' he said. 'There are not that many Chinese buyers who come to Maastricht, but those who come are highly serious.' The London gallery Rolleston, which specializes in English furniture and Asian works of art, particularly from China and Japan, may offer traditional art, but at least one of its works may strike a chord with young newlyweds: an elaborately decorated gilt-copper and lacquer norimono made around 1857 in Japan's Edo period. A norimono, sometimes known as a palanquin, is a boxlike enclosed chair in which a bride would be carried to the groom's family home after a wedding. Lifting this norimono, with its 15-foot-long carrying beam, requires several attendants. And its interior has its original wallpaper, according to James Rolleston, the gallery's director. Rolleston said that the gallery found the piece at a London auction. 'It wasn't well cared for,' he said. 'This is where one's skills as a dealer come in. We cleaned it up and conserved it.' Rolleston was founded in 1955 but this is the first year it has participated in TEFAF Maastricht. Among its other offerings are a pair of George I needlework-covered armchairs (circa 1720) known as the Wanstead House Chairs. Rolleston said that the chairs were from an original set of 12 and that they had an 'unbroken provenance,' meaning that there was complete documentation of previous ownership — always a major plus, and sometimes difficult to find with older works. But the norimono may get a large share of visitor attention just for its size. 'It literally doesn't fit in our gallery,' Rolleston said, adding that before the fair, it was sitting in storage. It seemed to be an unlikely candidate for a spontaneous purchase for a private collector. 'I can't imagine whose house it would fit into,' Rolleston said. 'It's the size of my first flat.' Its dimensions may restrict possible buyers, but you never know. 'We're earmarking this for a museum,' he said. 'But we don't rule out a collector buying it.'
New York Times
03-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Before Buying an Artwork, Make Sure It Wasn't Stolen. Here's How.
TEFAF Maastricht, the European Fine Art Foundation's spring fair, is known for the high quality of artworks its dealers display each year, and for its extensive vetting procedure, which ensures that the treasures on offer have been verified as authentic. That process always includes a check on the work's provenance — the artwork's history of previous ownership. Even so, said Will Korner, TEFAF's head of fairs, there are always things that fall through the cracks. 'Objects are removed every year, at basically every fair, regarding issues of provenance,' he said. Any collector who is prepared to spend a considerable sum on a painting, sculpture or artifact should make sure that they do their own independent research, he added. 'They can feel confident that a standard has been applied that is leading in the market, but I would always encourage every single buyer to conduct their own checks,' he said in a phone interview. 'That's something that any art lawyer or art consultant would tell them to do.' Tainted beauties During World War II, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi art agents looted untold millions of artworks and cultural objects. Many artworks still have not found their way back to their rightful owners, or their beauty has been tainted by a history of theft. Collectors of the type of works that the Nazis favored, particularly old masters and Impressionist paintings, should be aware that what they are buying could have a wartime history. The same is true for artifacts and antiquities that may have been looted or stolen in other global conflicts, as well as ceremonial objects like masks and other heritage from formerly colonized nations. To avoid buying a work of art with a problematic history, and to guard against potential future claims, art provenance specialists say it is crucial to do some digging before you buy. Although new information comes to light every day, the best way to protect yourself is to ask the right questions, request as much data as possible, and independently verify that the information you get is accurate and up-to-date. The prospect of trying to discover the entire history of the 350-year old painting you want to buy might seem daunting. But Perry Schrier, a World War II cultural heritage adviser for the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, said collectors do not need to hire a private researcher or an art detective for this work — in most cases. Provenance research is a fast-growing field within the art world, and today there are many independent experts available for hire. But some preliminary research that you can do on your own might quickly rule out any need for such a specialist, or help you learn what kind of specialist you need. 'There's a fair amount you can already do from your living room, from your laptop,' Schrier said. 'Later, there may be some things you have to go find in the archives, and that will be a second level, but the websites are very convenient nowadays and a great place to start.' Many resources are available to the public for free, or for a small fee. A basic provenance check may take a couple of hours or about half a day, but it should include a few steps that either put the item in the clear or raise red flags. If anything strikes you as potentially fishy, it is time to engage with additional experts, Schrier said. If you do engage a provenance researcher, look for one who specializes in the area of research particular to the work you are buying — for example, Dutch old masters, German Expressionists or Congolese masks — and can speak and read the languages relevant to any archival research. The important thing is to make sure you do due diligence before you buy, said Amelie Ebbinghaus, a director of the Art Loss Register, a London-based organization that helps the art trade track lost, looted or stolen objects. And make sure you request all the documentation the dealer or owner already has about the artwork, including information about the sources they used, before putting any money on the table. 'That may seem obvious, but quite often people ask for it right after they buy the work,' she said, 'and that doesn't give them the same protection.' 'Start with the object' The first step will be to have a good look at the piece of art, both front and back. 'Always start with the object,' advised Richard Aronowitz, global head of restitution for Christie's international auction house. 'The back of the painting, or the stretcher, might bear some indication of its ownership history,' he said. 'You're looking for labels, stamps, inventory numbers, inscriptions,' as well as any sign that such labels have been removed. Nazi owners sometimes marked their works with a swastika or an eagle on the back, and that would be an obvious red flag. (Conversely, such signs can be misleading, Aronowitz said, as forgers have also used them to make a fake work seem genuine by suggesting that it has been through many hands.) More likely, you will find labels of the gallery owners who handled the work in the past. 'You're looking for clues, evidence,' Aronowitz said, 'but deciphering evidence is difficult.' If you notice something unusual, you can often look it up on the internet, or consult an expert. Next, Ebbinghaus recommended plugging a photo of the work into a search engine like TinEye, or an app like Google Lens, which will scour the internet for billions of images to find any potential match. 'You'd be surprised by what you can find there from what has recently been sold on the market,' she said. Ask questions Once you have found out what you can, ask the seller, or current owner, for all the information that is currently known about the work's previous owners. Most sellers at a big fair like TEFAF, or at one of the top auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's, can be expected to provide you with a list of all previous owners. Sometimes known as a provenance chain, the list will indicate where the work has been from its creation to the present, and the dates when it changed hands. In reality, provenance histories are often incomplete. Ask questions if there is no ownership history between the years 1933 and 1945, if the work changed hands multiple times during that period or if the prewar owners' names are not listed. If you are buying at a smaller fair, from an auctioneer or at a flea market, you will likely have to do this work yourself. And even if a lengthy provenance history provides you assurance that the seller has done his or her homework, Ebbinghaus said that it is wise to check this material to verify it for yourself. Do your research You can do this using key databases that list missing or stolen art. The Art Loss Register is the largest, with more than 700,000 items that people have listed as missing or stolen. A search on a single artwork costs $100, and yearly subscriptions are available for those aiming to check more items. The German Lost Art Foundation runs two databases that are useful in provenance research: its Lost Art Database lists 126,000 objects that were seized from Jewish citizens between 1933 and 1945; its Proveana database displays the results of its research projects related to Nazi persecution and theft of Jewish property. The Commission for Looted Art in Europe in London runs the Central Registry of Information on Looted Cultural Property 1933-1945, a website and database, also known as Looted Art, which offers an object search of more than 25,000 pieces. The ERR Database has an inventory of more than 40,000 art objects taken by Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the Nazi task force that looted art and archives, then took them to occupied Paris. And the German Historical Museum in Berlin, a museum devoted to German culture and history that describes provenance research as one of its core tasks, offers three databases focused on Nazi plunder. If your preliminary research uncovers anything suspicious, alert the seller, said Korner, the TEFAF fairs director. Always keep documentation of your research, because if an unforeseen claim arises in the future, you can demonstrate your due diligence. 'There isn't a register of all the art on the planet,' Ebbinghaus said. 'There are gaps, and as soon as an artwork has a gap in the provenance, there's a risk that it could be claimed at some point in time.' On the other hand, she added, the chance is not great: 'We check more than 400,000 items a year and less than 1 percent of those turn out to be problematic.'
