Study 184: A Provenance Is a List of Departures: What the Record Cannot See

Provenance records owners, dates, methods of transfer and exhibition history. Every entry marks a departure, and the long intervals between entries are blank by construction. This study examines the act that falls inside those intervals and cannot be represented by a market record: repair. A repair is an expenditure that produces no gain and frequently exceeds any price effect, which makes it the cleanest available evidence that somebody intended to keep an object rather than to hold it. The record is made, by conservators, to professional standard, and it is not provenance: it sits in a separ