Provenance Lab

The Provenance Lab at Leuphana University of Lüneburg is an interdisciplinary research hub for experimental knowledge production in the field of provenance studies. The Lab, which is part of the Institute of Philosophy and Art History, was founded and is headed by Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother, who brings over a decade of experience in provenance research and museum practice to the project. At the lab, we see provenance information as both individual object biographies and empirical data that, through computational methods, allow us to explore cultural and social connections across eras and regions on a broader scale.

©Lynn Rother

Selected Publications

Rother, Lynn, Max Koss, and Fabio Mariani. “Provenance as Accountability: Transparent and Verifiable Cataloguing for the Digital Age.” In Elgar Research Handbook on Art, Culture, Heritage and Law, forthcoming.

Koss, Max, Bárbara Romero Ferrón, Lynn Rother. “What’s in a Name? Measuring the Potential of Provenance Data for Art Market Studies and the History of Collecting.” In Hand and Glove: Art Market Studies and the History of Collecting, edited by Blair Brooks and Natasha Degen. Brill, forthcoming.

Mariani, Fabio, Max Koss, and Lynn Rother. “People Information in Provenance Data: Biographical Entity Linking with Wikidata and ULAN.” Zivot Umjetnosti 114, no. 1 (2024): 148–61. https://doi.org/10.31664/zu.2024.114.07.

Rother, Lynn, Max Koss, and Fabio Mariani. “Interpreting Strings, Weaving Threads: Structuring Provenance Data with AI.” In Sammlungsforschung im Digitalen Zeitalter: Chancen, Herausforderungen und Grenzen, edited by Stefan Alschner and Katharina Günther. Kulturen des Sammelns: Akteure, Objekte, Medien 6. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2024: 93-103. https://doi.org/10.15499/kds-005-008.

Rother, Lynn, Max Koss, and Fabio Mariani. “The Future of Provenance: Digital Cataloguing as Reparative Practice.” In The Next Horizon of Museum Practice: Voluntary Repatriation, Restitution, and Reparations, edited by Elizabeth Merritt, Arlington, VA: American Alliance of Museums, 2024. https://www.aam-us.org/programs/about-aam/the-next-horizon/.

Rother, Lynn, Fabio Mariani, and Max Koss. “Verknüpfte Daten: Die Zukunft der Provenienzforschung.” Museumskunde: Fachzeitschrift für die Museumswelt 89, no. 1/2 (December 5, 2024): 26–31.

Mariani, Fabio. “Introducing VISU: Vagueness, Incompleteness, Subjectivity, and Uncertainty in Art Provenance Data.” In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Methods in the Humanities 2022: Lausanne, Switzerland, June 9–10, 2022., edited by Yannick Rochat, Coline Métrailler, and Michael Piotrowski, 3602: 63–84. Aachen: Sun Site Central Europe (RWTH Aachen University), 2023. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3602/.

Mariani, Fabio, Lynn Rother, and Max Koss. “Teaching Provenance to AI: An Annotation Scheme for Museum Data.” In AI in Museums: Reflections, Perspectives and Applications, edited by Sonja Thiel and Johannes Bernhardt, 163–72. Bielefeld: transcript, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839467107-014.

Rother, Lynn, Fabio Mariani, and Max Koss. “Hidden Value: Provenance as a Source for Economic and Social History.” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte: Economic History Yearbook 64, no. 1 (May 1, 2023): 111–42. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbwg-2023-0005.

Rother, Lynn, Max Koss, and Fabio Mariani. “Taking Care of History: Toward a Politics of Provenance Linked Open Data in Museums.” In Perspectives on Data, edited by Emily Lew Fry and Erin Canning. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2022. https://www.artic.edu/digital-publications/37/perspectives-on-data/25/taking-care-of-history.

Selected Events

January 15, 2026
Katalogisieren als Machtpraxis – Kunstgeschichte zwischen epistemischer Gewalt und Gerechtigkeit [Cataloguing as a Practice of Power: Art History Between Epistemic Violence and Justice]
Conference talk by Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother at Engagierte Kunstgeschichte. Verantwortung, Handlungsspielräume und Relevanz eines Fachs in Zeiten multipler Krisen [Engaged Art History: Responsibility, Agency, and the Relevance of a Discipline in Times of Multiple Crises], TU Berlin
https://www.tu.berlin/en/kuk/events/conferences-workshops/workshop-engaged-art-history

January 8, 2026
Innovative Approaches to Catalogues Raisonnés to Elevate Underrepresented Artists and Art
Panel contribution by Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother at ICRA's 7th Annual Conference | Representing the Unrepresented, London
https://icra.art/events

December 18-21, 2025
Coding Provenance Workshop
(Final participants selected)
https://www.leuphana.de/en/institute/ipk/aktuell/aktuelles-und-veranstaltungen/single-view/2025/07/16/call-for-application-coding-provenance-workshop-on-computational-provenance-research.html

December 10, 2025
The Epistemologies of Provenance: Textual Practices, Humans, and Artificial Intelligence
Conference talk by Dr. Bárbara Romero Ferrón at Archival Intelligence: AI × Archives × Museums, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Karlsruhe
https://zkm.de/de/2025/12/archival-intelligence

December 9, 2025
Unheimliche Provenienz: Die Kunstgeschichte und ihr Doppelgänger [Uncanny Provenance: Art History and its Double]
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Lynn Rother as part of Museum und Museumswissenschaft – Aktuelle Themen und Tendenzen [Museums and Museum Studies – Current Topics and Trends], Universität Würzburg

November 14, 2025
Preisargumente in Restitutionsstreitigkeiten [Price as Argument in Restitution Disputes]
Conference talk by Coco Amy Rufer, M.A. at Fachforum “Kunsthandel der Moderne in Berlin” [Expert Forum “The Modern Art Trade in Berlin”], Berlinische Galerie