Provenance and Sources

20 Sept 2012

Writing Assignment Due 27 SeptShort Paper #1: Object Description and ProvenanceIn this assignment, you will describe the provenance of an object from a museum collection. You will describe the context of its production and then include information on how the object came to be part of the museum collection.  In writing your paper, please include make sure that the following steps have been included:•A description and image of the object (1-2 paragraphs)•Use secondary sources to describe the context of its production: • the period in which this object has emerged and how it was used

(2-3 paragraphs)•Document the provenance or history of that particular object according to the records available in the museum or online (3-4 paragraphs)• Use as much information as you can: online information on

museum website, accession files and possibly contacting the museum's to find out as much as you can about the history of that particular object

• This can oftentimes be an exhaustive search. Don’t get caught up here. Keep it short!

•list works used to write your essay

More complete provenance

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/116166

Pictorial quiltAmerican (Athens, Georgia), 1895–98Harriet Powers, American, 1837–1910

PROVENANCEAbout 1895-1898, Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall (1852-1908), New York [see note 1]; 1908, by inheritance to his son, Reverend Basil Douglas Hall (b. 1888 - d. 1979), New York; between November 2, 1960 and February 7, 1961, sold by Hall to Maxim Karolik (b. 1893 - d. 1963), Boston; 1964, bequest of Karolik to MFA. (Accession date: May 13, 1964) 

Not so much

String of beads and amuletsEgyptian, Middle Kingdom, 2040–1640 B.C.

PROVENANCEFrom Egypt, Sheikh Farag SF 204. 1913: Excavated by the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts Expedition; assigned to the MFA by the government of Egypt.

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/string-of-beads-and-amulets-141332

Importance of Provenance

Provenance:Sale, Corot, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 26-June 9, 1875, (deuxième partie) no. 450; purchased by M. Legendre, Paris. Alexis Rouart, Paris [1]; Alphonse Kann (1870-1948), Paris; confiscated by the ERR, 1940 [2]; Munich Central Collecting Point, June 23, 1945 to May 23, 1946 [3]; repatriated to France, May 23, 1946 [4]; restituted to Alphonse Kann, Paris, July 1946 [5]; with André Weil at the Matignon Galleries, Paris, 1949; Louis E. Stern, New York, May 31, 1949; bequest to PMA, 1963.

Pensive Young BrunetteJean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, French, 1796 - 1875

http://www.philamuseum.org/research/98-487-371.html

Things to consider Role of the curator

voice and intent Importance of documentation and research Institutional restrictions Anxieties about challenging audiences Teaching students to become better researchers

Dissemination of knowledge to the public See Fowle’s chapter in Cautionary Tales

Who can add content? Simon’s chapter in Letting Go, p. 22 Participatory curating Museum as a place of dialogue How do museums respond?

Primary SourcesA primary source is the original document or physical object which was written or created during the time under study. The material or first-hand information. These sources were present during an experience or time period and offer an inside view of a particular event.

Some types of primary sources include:• ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS (excerpts or translations

acceptable): Diaries, speeches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, news film footage, autobiographies, official records 

• CREATIVE WORKS: Poetry, drama, novels, music, art • OBJECTS: Pottery, furniture, clothing, buildings

Secondary Sources

A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. Secondary sources include comments on, interpretations of, or discussions about the original material. You can think of secondary sources as second-hand information.

Some types of secondary sources include:

• PUBLICATIONS: Textbooks, magazine articles, histories, criticisms, commentaries, encyclopedias 

Researching the object:a pierced coin

What is an object biography?

Broadly, all objects in the museum have a life (or series of different lives).

They are made, used and then come into the museum.

Each object has a story to tell, a story shaped by human use.

How do we write the narrative? And why?

Steps

Understand your context: colonial New England Identify an object

What is it? Where is it now and how did it get there: provenance What is its date? What was its function? Who made, owned, or used the object? What then can we learn of context and social life? Your thesis question: problemitize your artifact and discuss

its relevance to the colonial period. What does the object tell us that wasn’t know before? What insight on the colonial period do we get from an object?

The object

Pierced coinLegend “CARO D G MAG BRI” and on reverse, crowned harp with legend “FRA ET HIB REX”Markings identify the coin as Richmond farthing minted during the reign of Charles I (1625-1649)Currently located in PMAE storage

The context

Recovered from the cellar of the Old College building during archaeological investigations in the 1980s.

Other objects in that context included 17th-century material: ceramics, glassware, tobacco pipes, etc.

Other coins recovered from Harvard Yard and sites in Chesapeake (Jamestown)

Colonial money

Currency not common in British coloniesColonists bartered for goods, also used other forms of colony currency including wampum and tobacco

Costs for attending Harvard in 17th century

■ Tuition: 8s■ Bed-making: 1s7d■ Study rent■ Commons and sizings■ Detriments

Tuition paid with food (cattle, mutton, wheat, corn, rye, barley, butter, eggs), goods (shoes), and wampumSo coins as currency weren’t necessarily needed in this contextWhat were other uses of coins?

Would pierced coins be part of the dress code?

flamboyant fashion as disorderly

sumptuary laws loudly enforced a modest and conservative style of dress among all inhabitants

In 1651 members of the Massachusetts legislature declared their “our utter detestation and dislike, that men or women of mean condition, should take upon them the garb of Gentlemen, by wearing Gold or Silver Lace, or Buttons, or Points at their knees, or to walk in great Boots . . . which tho allowable to persons of greater Estates, or more liberal education, is intolerable of people in low condition”

1655 Harvard College Laws mirrored this orthodox vision of conservative dress, dictating that students were not permitted to leave their chambers without “Coate, Gowne, or Cloake” and that “every one, everywhere shall weare modest and somber habit, without strange ruffianlike or Newfangled fashions, without all lavishe dress, or excesse of Apparell whatsoever”

What other items found in the same context?

four metal hook-and-eye clasps

bone button

copper-alloy button with embossed decoration

iron knee buckle

several lead fabric seals (most likely from bales of woolen fabric)

assemblage suggests that the students likely followed prescribed institutional fashions...except for the pierced Richmond farthing.

Does not comply with “somber habit.”

The pierced coin recovered from the Old College cellar suggests that the wearer was anxious about bodily protection, even witchcraft, while being educated at a Puritan institution, where he was being rigorously schooled in knowledge about hellfire, brimstone, God’s wrath, and the dangers of witchcraft.

Was it a touch piece?

pierced coin or medal worn close to the body (often concealed under clothing) to cure or ward off disease or evil (these two intertwined in 17th century)long-standing practice in Europe (as early as 14th century)

Religion and the Puritan body

The Humours, from Margarita Philosophica by Gregor Reisch, 1508

Puritanism: the Devil is a real tangible threat

• Humans inherently sinful and corrupt, rescued from damnation only by arbitrary divine grace, was duty-bound to do God's will, which he could understand best by studying the Bible and the universe which God had created and which he controlled.

• predestination: Puritans believed that belief in Jesus and participation in the sacraments could not alone effect one's salvation; one cannot choose salvation, for that is the privilege of God alone.

• Even children touched by original sin.

• Benjamin Wadsworth: “their Hearts naturally, are a meer nest, root, fountain of Sin, and wickedness." Accordingly, young children were continually reminded that their probable destination was Hell.

Illustration of an authentic case of witchcraft, from Glanvill, 1681

Protecting the body and soul: a common practice

touch pieces just one commonly used strategies to protect physical and mental bodies .

Concealed shoes and other items - placed in walls, chimneys, underneath hearths, and doorways

concealed as a protective device to ward off evil or may have been used as counter-magic to deflect a curse or other negative circumstance, such as illness or economic blight considered to be the consequence of malevolent spirits or witches

Witch bottles

magical properties assigned to everyday items. For example, Bellarmine bottles filled with urine, hair, and pins to make them into “witch bottles” as a strategy to keep evil spirits away. also concealed

Pierced coins in other colonial contexts

variety of objects used as adornment, amulets or charms

amulets recovered from Spanish colonial sites intended to protect the wearer from illness or to help the individual withstand or bring about certain bodily processes: teething, nosebleeds, hemorrhage, or conception.

Native and African peoples in North America also pierced or drilled holes in coins and thimbles for the purpose of adornment.

African Americans’ use of pierced coins in adornment practices during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is often related to the folk use of charms to ward off evil spirits or illness

Health

Glass pharmaceutical bottle fragment Black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger )

Smoking

Was there need for protection at Harvard?

rhetoric of disease, devil, and sin reflected in sermons and curriculumAccounts suggest that students tried black magic, and a student impersonated the devil. President Dunster lit a trail of gunpowder at him.a choice made by someoneraises questions about how individuals at seventeenth-century Harvard chose to protect their bodies through adornment that went against the grain of institutional ideals.