One thing I've learned from watching Antiques Road Show is the value of tracing the artifact's road to its present owner. The thread about the Union Pacific caboose cabinets brought this to the top of my frontal lobes, and I thought it worth mentioning. Every artifact should have some tag or letter, or reference document, tracing the path to how you or your museum came to acquire it. The cabinets are a perfect example. Headlights, builders plates, tools, car parts, etc., should indicate where it came from, how you came to acquire it, and who first collected the item.
"My Grandfather was given it when he retired..."
"I bought it from the estate sale of...on this date."
"I took it from a string of passenger cars at such & such salvage."
"My uncle stole it from the shops when he was fired..."
"When they closed the tower, this was tossed in the junk pile to be burned."

Now part of this is tongue-in-cheek, but nevertheless, I thinkit remains important documentation.

good points and we have a donor form at the Cheyenne depot museum that gets filled out with all those details. I always ask for a whole story if it exists and write everything down and a follow up telephone number in case we miss something. Its not always been like that however and that gives us issues labeling some artifacts.

Mike

If it helps reinforce the concept, any future preservation attempts may very well limited (or promoted) by the ability to prove this history behind the artifact. I've lost track of how many times we've been able to prove historic eligibility (or solve abstract engineering problems) by the existence of a seemingly unimportant piece of paper in somebody's collection, somewhere. You owe it to the future.

My favorite 'value of of provenance' remains the story behind the preservation of the Maine Central WWI outside braced wood boxcar 35050 now down to Savannah. That car had been grafted on to the back of the Belfast, ME freight house and forgotten for decades, and all the paint and identification was gone except the last three digits of one car number on one side. It never appeared on any B&ML records and no Maine Central rosters we could locate in the B&ML era. One hardcore Maine Central fan - armed with the equipment disposition records of the MC in his collection - helped us track the car through MC ownership and MOW service to direct sale to the building owner, way back in the 1930's. The car had been renumbered as an MC tool car, taken off the interchange roster after WWI, and didn't appear in any roster listings except one faded disposition page. Without that provenance, the museum couldn't take it. With it, see the rest of the story at Savannah, it's just quite the piece of amber.

Randy, got a link for that story?

How do you properly establish provenance?

From watching TV (they're not) Reality Shows, there doesn't seem to be any real good method.

You tell them the verbal history, and they say "We have no way to prove that, it's only your word..."

You provide a "Certificate of Authenticity" and the expert says "These are easily faked, they're worthless" Then, of course, the expert goes on to tell you whether or not the object is real. But nobody vouches for their provenance.

What are the best practices?

You gather the best available information, and document everything under your control during the time the object is in your care. Provenance or just history, it provides the kind of context that adds meaning and value relative to something similar with no context.

Anybody is free to believe anything they wish about anything......read the Lovejoy mysteries if you don't believe how subjective expert opinions can be.

dave

American Association of Museums has a provenance guide available for sale from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Provenance-Research-Nancy-Yeide/dp/093120173X


From the International Foundation for Art Research:



http://www.ifar.org/provenance_guide.php

Wesley

I haven't referenced the document cited, but I think "provenance" is exactly what another contributor said. It's acquiring photos, written documentation, connections to person living or dead, and any story relative to the item. Provenance doesn't make an object valuable, but it enhances the value by tracing referential links to people and events.

An equally, if not more important consideration, is does the donating/selling party have the legal authority to pass ownership/title which is transfered through a deed of gift or bill of sale. Furthermore, who within your organization has the authority to accept the transaction?

Recently a neighbor of a deceased individual left items at our museum stating that it was a donation in the name of the deceased. A few weeks later, the executor of the estate contacted us asking for return of the same objects. The neighbor did not know the legal wishes of the deceased/owner nor had the authority to move the objects.

Document, Document, Document.

The "story relative to the item"especially in situations were tradition has become "accepted fact" over hard evidence and documentation can provide a lot of difficulty and muddy the waters significantly.

I have run into instances were such tradition accepted as fact has been passed on to the extent that it has been repeated in a number of published works and is almost impossible to correct.

Recently I developed a matrix illustrating how a number of published works, all relating the same history, simply used the works that proceeded their works rather than seeking such primary source material as was available. One particular "fact" I traced back through at least six different works to its original source published in 1954 which the author had simply thrown in as hearsay with no supporting material but today is considered hard fact.

Trust but verify!

Its also very important when writing-up or documenting an artifact etc. that proper citation is used. This is double important as time passes and the above mentioned reliance on secondary sources becomes more prominent.

This is probably as close as you will get:
http://www.wtoc.com/Global/story.asp?S=8459974

The ex-MC car is on the far left now:
http://tomtribby.files.wordpress.com/20 ... .jpg?w=640
Interior shot, restored as a tool car:
http://tomtribby.files.wordpress.com/20 ... .jpg?w=640

What surprised me...and is the moral of the story and the wakeup call here, is that because the Roundhouse Railroad Museum had adopted a formalized policy on acquisition and collections, they HAD to have a provenance research to accept it. I accepted the challenge as I really wanted to see the car preserved, having no idea how difficult it would actually be to meet that standard. Most times you'd have either a railroad record or reporting marks, in this case, nothing but three faded digits on a partial number.

The Internet has made this a lot easier, but in most cases, it's made it quicker to contact the real people that probably have the physical paperwork and research at their disposal. Everybody has that 'thing' in their collections that drives them nuts; it either has a story, or a legend, but would you be able to meet the standard if you were to donate it?

The other thing, and it's not an historic necessity, but certainly part of the story... nearly everything we're accumulated from timetables to buildings has a 'story' of how it managed to evade destruction for as long as it did. Even if people may not respect the 'last surviving streetcar of the West Gumstump Electric Co.', they can appreciate that it was saved as a hunting camp/chicken coop for 50 years, and a picture of it during that era makes the appreciation of both the restoration and the rarity appreciated.