A constellation of recent discussions relating to art and artifact collections management.

How do you not know who owns the Van Gogh? Ask the person who keeps the records (if there is one). Standing downwind, this story about the dispute in ownership of a Van Gogh painting loaned to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) reeks of collectors who do not hire proper managers of their collection.

Repatriation has surged into normalization in the last several years. While we quickly denounce the lack of transparency or the apparently lethargic pace of returning objects to their countries of origin. However, should we not praise institutions for doing the work to return them?

Some will pessimistically declare that museums benefited from these stolen objects for years or decades prior to their return and do not deserve positive attention for returning objects that never belonged to them in the first place. However, were I a museum director, I would expect a significant amount of due diligence about the origins of the objects prior to returning. These efforts require malnourished museums to divert large amounts of resources from other important projects. That they do it seems noteworthy.

All this repatriation talk mandates me to share this sinister Instagram post.

Lastly, I just randomly learned about that in the first half of the 20th Century, art was an event in the Olympic Games. This podcast explains the history behind what seems “ridiculous” today.