Students in Yuliya Komska's advanced German-language seminar GERM 64.10: After Nazism: Germany in Ruins stepped into the role of art detectives last fall, partnering with the @HoodMuseum to uncover the missing provenance of artworks acquired in the period of the Nazi rule in Germany. They worked in small teams and chose a single artwork that intrigued them. This took some pressure off venturing into what was, for them, unchartered waters.
Elizabeth (Beth) Mattison, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art at the Hood Museum of Art, was always available to help out with research tips and recondite sources. Both Beth and Yuliya emphasized that even dead ends or seeming failures to find conclusive evidence count, and stressed that the assignment is designed to reframe our image of research as a linear process with a clear-cut outcome.
For their final presentations in the Museum's study room, the student teams shared their research journeys—complete with all of the challenges, twists, and hard-earned discoveries—alongside the pieces themselves. Many commented on discovering the transformative effects of cold-emailing experts or donor family members, especially in our age when so much is done with anonymous clicks.
"Professor Komska gave us the autonomy to discover our painting's history in our own way," said Stephen Droppa '23. "Instead of history books and pre-written analyses, we were sifting through catalogs and records, looking for the tiniest clue about where to go next. The feeling of creating a new connection after this deep search was incredibly satisfying."
This collaboration with the Hood Museum of Art follows up in the footsteps of Veronika Fuechtner's earlier work in GERM 13: Beyond Good and Evil. It's one of many ways in which students have a chance to make a tangible contribution both to campus institutions and to provenance research. Interested German-speaking students who have not yet taken the course will be able to enjoy the assignment with a new set of artworks in fall 2026, when the course is offered again.
This story has been adapted from the Instagram feed of the School of Arts & Sciences. Photo credit: @pari.sidana '28.