Provenance I

In art history, provenance is the story of ownership—the long chain of hands through which an object passes. But it’s also a way of tracing care. Every notation in a museum ledger, every faded label on the back of a frame, is a fragment of someone’s attention.

We’ve been thinking about provenance as a kind of archaeology of regard. The more you follow an object’s path, the more you see how history is made not by creation alone, but by circulation. A painting moves from a studio to a salon to a collector’s house to a gallery. It gathers meaning each time, absorbing the light, dust, and conversation of each place.

In this way, provenance becomes more than proof of authenticity—it becomes a social network in the oldest sense. A record of who looked, who cared, who deemed the work worth keeping. To study it is to study intimacy across time.

Every object has its own geography of affection. Even the most bureaucratic provenance documents—the receipts, the loans, the accession numbers—form a kind of invisible portrait of devotion.

Art history begins not just with the maker, but with all who have kept the work alive.