With PROLAB, the initiators –Meuwissen and Oostdijk – seek to address the provenance-problem practically. It will do so by bringing together political, social, and academic and other stakeholders in the Netherlands, who will together create a handbook that discusses and catalogs all currently available practical tools, knowledge and pitfalls of carrying out provenance research within the Dutch context.
The contributors to the volume are government agencies, professionals active at different Dutch universities, they come from the art market, are law enforcement officials and legal professionals. The authors will demonstrate step by step how they carry out provenance research in their particular fields or institutional setting. They will each center on a recent case study, which shows both the exciting detective work that is involved in solving complicated provenance cases, but also the practical dilemmas that they face in their particular line of work. The chapters will show a broad variety of different methods, ranging from more traditional (art)historical practices to newer ones, for instance incorporating the digital analysis of large corpora, as well as conducting the vanguard material analyses. The book will be published in Dutch, so it is easily accessible for Dutch students and the general public. It aims to practically train students, art professionals, and citizens scientists, and so serve a new generation of provenance researchers in the Netherlands.
CLICK HERE for the PROLAB flyer (in Dutch).
