Monday, February 24, 20253:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Bunche Hall, Rm 10383
How can the concept of Art World Patterns help us rethink provenance as the large-scale study of object biographies and the socio-cultural-political historical conjunctures that shaped these?
The UCLA Department of History, Latin American Institute and Center for European and Russian Studies invite you to a talk, entitled "Between Canon and Coincidence: using data-driven approaches to investigate the provenance of Indigenous Latin America collections in European museums" with Professor Martin Berger (Leiden University). This talk will take place at Bunche Hall Room 10383 on Monday, February 24, 2025 at 3:00 PM and registration is requested.
About the Talk
Why do museums have the things they have and not others? And how did larger historical currents shape the museum collections we have today? These two questions are at the heart of the project "Between Canon and Coincidence: using data-driven approaches to understand Art Worlds (BECACO)". The BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and archaeological collections from Indigenous Latin America in European museums, focusing on the period 1850-2000.
Museums around the world are currently investing heavily in provenance research. After the ‘first wave’ of attention to the provenance of museum objects in the context of Nazi-looted art, the current ‘second wave of provenance’ examines the histories of material in ethnographic museums and their possible relation to Colonial violence. Drawing on (art) historical, museological, archaeological, and sociological theory, the BECACO project aims to reconceptualize provenance studies in museums as the study of the socio-politico-historical conditions that facilitated the movement of cultural material. The project works with a corpus of 400.000+ Indigenous Latin American objects, currently housed in 12 museums in 9 European countries. In order to manage this large corpus, we combine various data-driven methodologies to identify patterns and apply quantitative analyses, network analysis and data mining to explore the promises and limitations of different data-driven approaches to collections-based research.
In this talk, we present our methodological approach, as well as our corpus, and focus on how Digital Humanities techniques can support the creation of new resources for scholars, curators, and Indigenous communities to work with and learn from Indigenous Latin American collections and their histories.
About the Speaker
Martin Berger is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Archaeology (Leiden University) and a member of the interdisciplinary research group Museums, Collections, and Society. His research interests include (etnographic) museums and collections histories, indigenous forms of representation, and the impact of globalization on indigenous cultures. He has explored these interests with specific attention to Mesoamerica and Surinam.
About BECACO
The ERC-funded BECACO project uses an innovative multidisciplinary framework to investigate the provenance of ethnographic and archaeological collections from the Indigenous Latin American world in European museums, focusing on the period 1850-2000. The project introduces the concept of Art World Patterns to reconceptualize provenance as the study of the socio-politico-historical conditions that facilitated the movement of cultural material. BECACO combines various data-driven methodologies to identify these patterns and apply quantitative analyses, network analysis and data mining to explore the promises and limitations of different data-driven approaches to provenance research. Read more about the project.
Venue
Bunche Hall 10383
(10th floor of Bunche Hall)
315 Portola Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Parking
You can find nearby parking at Parking Structure 4 or Parking Structure 5. Parking Structure 5 has an hourly rate of $8 per hour and Parking Structure 4 has an hourly rate of $4 per hour for visitors. Visit UCLA Visitor Parking for more information. Ride-share drop off is closest at the turnaround at the front of Royce Hall located at: 10745 Dickson Court, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Accessible Parking: If you have accessibility needs, you may park in the Pay-By-Space/Visitor Parking area on the rooftop (level 5) of Parking Structure 5 and proceed to the Self-Service Pay Station machine to pay by credit card.
Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies, Latin American Institute, Department of History