Episodi

  • Study 212: Nine Fields. None of Them Is Provenance.

    Study 212: Nine Fields. None of Them Is Provenance.
    Oct 16 2026
    A museum opening in December decides what its object page says when something is not known. Three neighbors publish the description and not the history.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    9 min
  • Study 207: The Sculpture Represents Nothing. Its Maker Said So First.

    Study 207: The Sculpture Represents Nothing. Its Maker Said So First.
    Oct 15 2026
    The President wants Infinity gone from the Smithsonian door because it means nothing. Its sculptor said so in 1956. The custodian of its account is going.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    10 min
  • Study 210: The Audit File Is a Provenance Record of Labor

    Study 210: The Audit File Is a Provenance Record of Labor
    Oct 15 2026
    Continuing study 103. The five administrations are lifted. The Milan prosecutor now compels the houses' own audit files and reads them for what they knew.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    10 min
  • Study 209: The People Who Darned It

    Study 209: The People Who Darned It
    Oct 15 2026
    A provenance record names the maker and the owners. Ulla Johnson names the people who darned it. Four cases on the authors of value the record leaves out.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    9 min
  • Study 211: The Studio Makes the Object. The Saleroom Makes the Record.

    Study 211: The Studio Makes the Object. The Saleroom Makes the Record.
    Oct 15 2026
    The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2026 reports artist-direct sales as the second largest channel by expenditure, with 38 percent of collectors buying works found on Instagram. Those channels produce no document. The report names documenting and cataloguing in its own description of collecting, measures neither across 82 figures, uses the word provenance eight times and never as a record somebody makes, and separately reports that around 20 percent of the sample have already borrowed against art, 45 percent of them in the United States, mostly in sums above one million dollars.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    10 min
  • Study 208: The Object Left the Studio. The Hand Did Not.

    Study 208: The Object Left the Studio. The Hand Did Not.
    Sep 29 2026
    Doig, Baselitz, Bacon, Noland: four published cases of a maker changing an object after it left the studio, and what a provenance record owes them.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    9 min
  • Study 206: What a Record Loses When It Moves

    Study 206: What a Record Loses When It Moves
    Sep 14 2026
    Moving is not one event. Four first-hand cases show a record losing something different in each kind of move, and only one of the four survived.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    12 min
  • Study 205: The Buyer's Premium Went Up at the Bottom and Down at the Top

    Study 205: The Buyer's Premium Went Up at the Bottom and Down at the Top
    Sep 10 2026
    Christie's and Bonhams changed their buyer's premiums for the new season. Read band by band, the increase lands at the bottom of the market.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    12 min