Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait de Femme, 1918 Oil on canvas 29 3/4 x 23 7/8 x 2 1/4 in. framed Denver Art Museum Collection: The Charles Francis Hendrie Memorial Collection, 1966.180. Image courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.
Last week, I had the opportunity to share some of the work I do here at the DAM as Associate Provenance Researcher with a lecture tracking my research to establish the ownership history or provenance of one artwork, Amadeo Modigliani’s Portrait de Femme. This painting came to the museum’s collection in 1966 but had gaps in its history that needed some investigating to confirm whose hands it passed through—especially during the tumultuous years in Europe during World War II.
My research took me to archived documents, databases, and libraries around the world, where I delved into the activities of bad actors involved in WW II art thefts and those responsible for returning objects to their rightful owners by the end of the war. In this lecture I share how I was able to fill in the missing pieces of this incredible painting’s history. Learn about the tools available to provenance researchers in establishing clear ownership throughout the lifetime of an object while following a Modigliani work from creation to its final home here at the Denver Art Museum.
In 2022, the Denver Art Museum established a dedicated Provenance Research department that spans object research from antiquities to the modern era, with staff knowledgeable in the areas of art law, restitution processes, and global impacts of Nazi-era works and other objects of cultural patrimony that are part of private and public collections.
It's important to note that not all 70,000 of the artworks in the DAM’s collection require this in-depth level of research to determine chain of ownership – for example, modern and contemporary works or works acquired directly from the artist already have that ownership chain documented. Many works came into the museum’s collection with a full chain of ownership already in place. The museum prioritizes which artworks to research by evaluating an artwork’s connection to Nazi era, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), art associated with a legacy of colonialism or conflict, and ancient art or art from archeological contexts. You can read more about those museum policies on our Provenance Research page.
Museums worldwide struggle with resources that make this research possible, and the DAM is leading the way in prioritizing provenance for collections throughout every curatorial department.
Portrait de Femme is currently out on loan in Germany for the traveling exhibition Modigliani: Modern Gazes. She can be seen on view at Staatsgalerie Stuttgart until March 2024 then at Museum Barberini until August 2024, before her return back home to the Denver Art Museum.
