Projects

PhD (2013-2018): Art Auctions in the 19th Century. The Creation of the Hôtel Drouot and the Development of the French Art Market
In 1852, the newly built auction house Hôtel Drouot opened its doors to the public. Here, the Association of Auctioneers organized countless sales of artworks, furniture, decorative art, fashion, and curiosities. Since 1801, this association had possessed a legally sanctioned monopoly for all public auctions – a monopoly that remained unbroken until the year 2000. Not only did the Hôtel Drouot provide a central venue for the auctions, the impressive new building also consolidated the change in the auctioneers’ role who, over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, had both broadened the range of their competence while also improving their social standing. This is particularly evident in the newly styled art sales: now auctions of contemporary art and large, staged auctions of whole collections began to take place. Along with the founding of the auction house came an intensified engagement with the valuation of art that allows for an exact historical analysis of this discourse and is the focus of the investigation.
 

Postdoc (2018- ongoing): The archive of the „Association of Museum Officials for Defense against Fakes and Improper Business Practices“

The project works with digital tools and towards a digital presentation of research, the core materials are archival media that the museums used, like x-rays and detail photography, as well as internal documents of expertise. The archive collects fake objects and was maintained and circulated internally by museum officials in the first half of the 20th century. This was a collaborative archive in which museums kept track of the art market. The relation between museums and the art market was often one of conflict, which becomes particularly evident with problematic objects such as forgeries.