Kunsthaus and UZH Join Forces to Step Up Provenance Research

Until 1910, the site of UZH’s main building was home to the Künstlergüetli – the forerunner of today’s Kunsthaus Zürich art museum. The two Zurich institutions have thus always been close neighbors. Now, after collaborating on individual projects and events in recent years, they are drawing closer still.

At a ceremony in late September, the museum and UZH’s Department of Art History deepened their collaboration by signing a memorandum of understanding and an initial collaboration agreement. “It feels like a wedding ceremony,” said Kunsthaus director Ann Demeester with a laugh at Monday’s signing ceremony in the garden pavilion at the Stockargut. “We’re delighted at the prospect of closer collaboration between theory and practice, between academia and the museum.”

Demeester’s enthusiasm was echoed by Bärbel Küster, who heads the Department of Art History at UZH. “This collaboration is a great opportunity to support early-career researchers,” Küster said, emphasizing that the university is far from an ivory tower and that her department places great importance on engaging with the public. For UZH Vice President Research Elisabeth Stark, the agreement reflects new momentum in the relationship between the two neighbors: “I’m delighted that we can learn with and from each other.”

The memorandum of understanding sets out the two institutions’ future collaboration on museum history and theory, which ranges from joint workshops, conferences and lecture series to research and funding applications. The cooperation will also benefit teaching at UZH and practical training, including joint courses, practical seminars and classes, as well as internships for students.

For their first joint project, the Kunsthaus and UZH’s Department of Art History will work more closely together on provenance research. Over the next five years, Joachim Sieber will lead the museum’s research into the ownership histories of the works on long-term loan from the Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection. This forms part of a project to review existing provenance research on the foundation’s collection. “We’ll review and categorize all 205 works in the collection and carry out further research into their provenance,” said Sieber, who heads the Kunsthaus’s own provenance department. The foundation’s archive at the Kunsthaus Zürich will also be cataloged in full, with some of the material digitized.

The project is funded by a one-time contribution from the City of Zurich, with associated UZH projects receiving CHF 600,000 in external funding from this contribution. UZH researchers will examine the historical context in which institutions such as the Kunsthaus Zürich and collectors associated with the museum operated. This research will result in two PhD theses over the next four years, addressing current questions about the history of Switzerland’s art market, institutions and collections.

“Provenance research is often equated with the restitution of paintings, but it is much more than that,” said Mattes Lammert of the Department of Art History. “It changes not only how we treat works of art but also how we view them. Art history thrives on renewing our perspectives on artworks by placing them in new contexts – and the same is true of museums. Provenance research seems ideally suited to this.”

UZH has played a pioneering role in academic provenance research in Switzerland. In 2024, its Department of Art History established a research focus in this field and created the first permanent position in provenance research at a Swiss university. Art historian Mattes Lammert took up the post of Lecturer Research and has headed the department’s provenance research since then.

He conducts research, examines the methods used in his field and supports students and PhD candidates through a regular forum for emerging scholars in provenance research. The newly agreed cooperation with the Kunsthaus is the first major achievement for this research initiative and for Lammert.

At Technische Universität Berlin, Lammert previously led the research project Acquisitions Made by the Berlin State Museums on the Parisian Art Market during the Occupation 1940–1944, which was carried out in collaboration with the German Center for Art History in Paris. To understand how artworks have changed hands, Lammert explains, we need to consider their wider historical context. Collectors such as Emil Bührle are always part of networks of art dealers, galleries and museums.

The research at UZH aims to examine and shed light on these connections during the period from 1933 to 1945, as well as in the years before and after. “The aim is to explore new sources, uncover historical connections and lay the groundwork for further research and public debate,” Lammert says. A major strength of the project, he adds, is that the research is independent and the PhD candidates’ academic freedom is fully guaranteed. “The museum is confronting its own past through the work of researchers from outside the institution,” he says. “That is also an act of trust.”

He sees the cooperation between the Kunsthaus Zürich and UZH’s Department of Art History as a potential model for other collaborations in Switzerland. In the longer term, he hopes that more museums will work with the university and that the private archives of Swiss art dealers will also become accessible to researchers. The agreements now in place mark a first step in that direction.