Expert Series: Who Owns History? Issues of Provenance and Restitution

Lubar Auditorium

Go behind the headlines and find out how the ownership history of objects affects art museum policy and practice today with a discussion moderated by Tanya Paul, Isabel and Alfred Bader Curator of European Art, and featuring Victoria Reed, Senior Curator for Provenance at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Eden Burgess, a lawyer who specializes in restitution cases.

American Sign Language interpretation will be provided during this event. Museum admission is free on Thursday, November 7.

The Expert Series welcomes renowned artists, scholars, and cultural activators to the Museum for expansive dialogues that dive deeper into an exhibition, artist, or theme.

Meet the Experts

Victoria Reed has been conducting provenance research at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, since 2003. She is responsible for the research and documentation of the ownership history of the MFA’s encyclopedic collection. She has overseen the successful resolution of several ownership claims for the Museum, and has lectured and published extensively on provenance research, museum ethics, and restitution. Reed earned her BA in liberal arts at Sarah Lawrence College, and her MA and PhD in art history at Rutgers University.

Eden Burgess is Of Counsel in SCH’s Art Law Group. She has focused her legal career on cultural heritage, the arts, and historic preservation. Eden represents a diverse array of clients, including museums, auction houses, collectors, foreign states, artists, nonprofits, Holocaust victims and their heirs, and Native American tribes. Eden has litigated and resolved complex claims involving Nazi seizures, wartime looting, forced sales, and thefts, and also assists clients with the maintenance and management of their collections and advises on the purchase, sale, and auction of cultural objects. Eden obtained her JD from The George Washington University Law School and her BA with Distinction from the University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar.

Sponsored by
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Fine Arts Society

Image: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (Italian, 1609–1664), Noah and the Animals Entering the Ark (detail), ca. 1650. Oil on canvas. 74½ × 111 in. (189.23 × 281.94 cm). Centennial Gift of Friends of Art, Myron and Elizabeth P. Laskin Fund, Fine Arts Society, Friends of Art Board of Directors, Francis and Rose Mary Matusinec, Burton and Charlotte Zucker, and the Milwaukee community, M1988.182. Photo by John R. Glembin