Issues & Debates: Provenance : An Alternate History of Art (Paperback)

This book goes beyond the narrow definition of the term provenance, which addresses only the bare facts of ownership and transfer, to explore ideas about the origins and itineraries of objects, consider the historical uses of provenance research, and draw attention to the transformative power of ownership. The result is a volume of essays that makes a strong case for recuperating provenance—what contributing author Anne Higonnet calls “so many epic tales compressed into such dry lists”—for the history of art. Provenance attends to the social life of art, a work's biography subsequent to the moment of its origin.