In the winter semester 2025/26, the Research Center for Provenance Research, Art and Cultural Property Law at the University of Bonn is offering a weekly online lecture series titled “Translocations. International Perspectives on the Translocation of Cultural Assets.”
Provenance research examines the ownership and history of objects in different historical contexts. This work is based on the reconstruction of various object movements, also known as “translocations.” The lecture series deals with the translocation of cultural assets over the last five centuries and asks questions such as: Why do objects move, what meanings are attributed to them, and what role do they play in the various contexts in which they move? How can we reconstruct and interpret object translocations? What types of object movements are considered problematic today?
Over the course of twelve sessions, international figures who work in museums, the art trade, universities, and other research institutions will explore these questions by providing insights into their respective daily work and highlighting case studies.
The lectures will be held in English (see the program for exceptions).
The series is offered as part of the master's program “Provenance Research and History of Collecting,” but is open to all interested parties.
Programm:
20.10.2025 Dr. David Gilks (University of East Anglia): Art Plunder and Restitution during the Revolutionary-Napoleonic Wars, 1792 – 1815
27.10.2025 Dr. Niko Munz (University of Oxford): What was Provenance in the Early Modern Era? The Case of Charles I’s Art Collection
03.11.2025 Dr. Joanna M. Gohmann (Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art): Translocations of Asian Art: Examples from the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of Asian Art
10.11.2025 Meghan O’Brien Backhouse (National Museums Liverpool): The World in Liverpool. Contexts of Collection, Acquisition, and Representation in Liverpool’s World Museum (National Museums Liverpool, UK)
17.11.2025 Antonia V. Bartoli (Yale University Art Gallery): Legacies of Nazi Looting: The Schaefer Collection at Yale
24.11.2025 Richard Aronowitz (Christie’s): Lost & Found: The Work of an International Auction House’s Restitution Department
01.12.2025 Dr. Shir Kochavi (Tel Aviv Museum of Art): Heirless Objects and the Question of Israel as Successor
08.12.2025 Dr. Wolf Burchard (Metropolitan Museum of Art): Provenance Research and the Savonnerie Carpets of Louis XIV: Tracing the Fragments of a Royal Commission
15.12.2025 Dr. Jana Gajdošová (Sam Fogg): Medieval Objects and Provenance Research: Experiences from the Art Market
12.01.2026 Prof. Dr. Gilbert Lupfer (Technische Universität Dresden, ehem. Vorstand des Deutschen Zentrum Kulturgutverluste): Sozialistisch handeln: Die Entziehung von Kunstwerken in den Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und in der DDR [Hinweis: Vorlesung auf Deutsch]
19.01.2026 Lubava Illyenko M.A. (University of Augsburg): Cultural Heritage in the Service of the Empire: Looting and Appropriation of Ukrainian Artifacts by Russia from the 19th Century to Today
26.01.2026 Alexander Herman MA BCL LLB (Institute of Art and Law): The Translocation of the Parthenon Marbles