Overvejelser om ”oprindelse”: Proveniensforskning i National-museets brasilianske samlinger

The article is based on a provenance research and digitalization project at the National Museum of Denmark. The project investigated the museum’s Brazilian collections, and it arose in the wake of the devastating fire in Brazil’s national museum, Museu Nacional, in 2018. Thus, the project is just one of many in a recent wave of provenance research in European museums, often aimed at generating methodological developments. Provenance means “place of origin.” However, using an example from the project, a carved wooden chair (Gc.76) donated to the National Museum in the middle of the 19th century, the article illustrates how determining “place of origin” is not always unambiguous. The article thus argues that within the current wave of provenance research, it is necessary with explicit theoretical reflections on the comprehension of “place of origin” in specific contexts and cases and an awareness of the implications of such understanding.