ABSTRACT
In the restitution discourse, provenance research has become a buzzword. It is buzzing not only in the large ethnological, natural history, and art history museums and university libraries, but also in smaller institutions, among private collectors, and in the art trade. Provenance research is not new, but centuries old. Taken literally, it answers the question, Where does a work of art come from? When it is from antiquity or from Europe, what is usually researched is its authenticity (is it real or fake?), its creator (how famous is he or she?), the names of its last owners, the exhibitions where it was shown, and the books, articles, and catalogues in which it was described.
