Provenance Research, Restitution, and Relationship Building

In this lecture, Kim Benzel, Curator in Charge of Ancient West Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, shares how the museum considers provenance research an institutional priority and responsibility. Over the past several years, the focus on provenance research has led to important reevaluations of The Met’s ancient West Asian holdings, which in turn have led to several voluntary, self-initiated restitutions. While these efforts on their own are critical, they have also served as opportunities to foster sustained relationships with source countries—through research collaborations and knowledge exchanges, outreach to local communities and celebrations of their heritage, and residencies for colleagues from the region. Under custodial agreements, objects of ancient West Asian art have even been newly welcomed into the collection. The talk will be followed by a Q&A.   

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This lecture is part of a series focused on issues of provenance. The program is supported by the Yale University Art Gallery’s Martin A. Ryerson Lectureship Fund, the Yale Peabody Museum’s Babylonian Collection, Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, the Yale University Library, and the Collaborations to Study Materiality & Objects program at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale. 

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