Najiba Choudhury

Abstract:

Methods and Challenges of Conducting Provenance Research on South Asian Art

In the context of the United States, the country does not legally recognize the antiquities laws of foreign nations; bilateral agreements and MoU’s are exceptions to the rule. The ratification of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property was a critical step towards US museums recognizing the rights of source countries to prevent their cultural heritage from leaving, and the UNESCO Convention put in some measures to curb the movement of objects. Nevertheless, the Convention has had its limitations; the 1970 cutoff year is both arbitrary and does not do much in terms of objects that have left their source countries before that year including colonial-era objects. The recent Sarr-Savoy report from 2018 on colonial context objects has lent fresh voice to concerns about colonial-era objects and those objects which were acquired after but still fall under the sphere of remnants of colonial, imbalanced power dynamics.

Recently, museums have come under intense scrutiny from journalists, concerned members of society, academics and researchers, and stakeholders from source countries, as well as activist groups both in source and market countries. The spread and swiftness of modern technology has also enabled these concerns to be raised in print, online and social media platforms at an accelerating rate. How can museums address these growing concerns from multiple stakeholders? In my presentation, I will address how I conduct provenance research on South Asian objects through using at least two case studies which will be from different time periods, regions/countries, materials, and consider objects of worship. I will also consider the special challenges of tracking small, portable objects and the lack of similar type of culture of keeping documentation as in western art tradition. Some of the questions I aim to raise through my presentation are: What are some challenges and concerns of provenance research in non-Western art? What are some tools – both traditional and unconventional – that researchers can utilize? How can museums use technology to their advantage?

Biobibliography:

Najiba Choudhury is a Collections Information Specialist and Provenance Researcher at the Freer|Sackler, Smithsonian Institution. She supports provenance research at the Freer and Sackler including WWII-era, new acquisitions, and handles public requests for provenance information. She also assists in managing the collections database, and works on online digitization projects.

She received her BA in Art History (specializing in Asian Art) and Economics from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, and holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Antiquities, Trafficking, Art Crime, and Repatriation from the University of Glasgow. She is finishing her Masters in Provenance & Collecting in an International Context from the University of Glasgow.

In 2019, she participated in the German/American Provenance Research Exchange Program (PREP) on WWII-provenance research in Dresden and Washington, D.C. Last summer, she was an invited speaker for the Association of Art Museum Curators where she presented at a webinar on “Approaches to Provenance Research.” Her article on the Asian art dealer, Yamanaka & Co. and the US seizure of his collection was published in December (2020) in the Journal for Art Market Studies. This spring, she is co-organizing a webinar on Yamanaka & Co., which is part of the series on Hidden Networks: The Trade of Asian Art. This April, she is also organizing a public program on provenance, which will feature a South Asian drawing in the museum’s collection and its object biography.

Najiba Choudhury, “Seizures and Liquidation Sales in the United States during World War II: Tracking the Fate of Japanese Art Dealership, Yamanaka & Company, Inc.” in Journal for Art Market Studies 4, no. 2 (2020)

Najiba Choudhury, “International Provenance Research Day,” Freer Sackler (blog), April 8, 2020, https://asia.si.edu/international-provenance-research-day/.