# The Expert Who Owned It > In this archive the person who authenticated, acquired or won back an object is repeatedly the person who owned it, named it or stole it. The provenance line records the fact and never calls it a conflict. > The Study - 2026-09-05 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-expert-who-owned-it/ ## Key points - A museum director owned the Rembrandt he lent to his own museum, where it hung for at least twenty-one years catalogued as a Rembrandt on his authority. The 2024 sale catalogue described it as after Rembrandt and unsigned. - The Metropolitan's own object title for its della Robbia altarpiece is The Marquand Altarpiece. Henry G. Marquand gave it in 1882 and was president of the museum's board of trustees, so the donor's name became the object's name inside the institution he governed. - The Met's Department of Arms and Armor was started in 1904 by a private collector of armour who was then made its founding curator in 1912. The department took the shape of one man's collecting field. - A provenance line records these facts accurately and never labels any of them. There is no field in any standard record format for the interest a person had in the object they were judging. ## The same name appears on both sides of the transaction ## The museum director owned the picture he hung ## The trustee's gift carries the trustee's name as the object's title ## A department was built around one man's collecting field ## The curator who bought it sent the provenance question to the dealer ## The curator who bought the companion volume, and the map that was a fake ## Five cases, and what each one cost ## How to read a name that appears twice ## Why this archive is free to read Every fact in this piece was published by the institution it concerns. The Metropolitan prints Marquand's name in the object's title and his gift in the credit line, the Mauritshuis catalogued Bredius's own panel under his own direction, and a Turkish court published the sentence it passed on the man who had won the hoard back. Nobody concealed anything. What nobody did was write the second half of the sentence, the half that says what the person stood to gain from the judgement they were making, and a hundred years later that half has to be rebuilt from four documents that never mention each other. ## Questions **Is it a conflict of interest for a museum curator to be a private collector?** Most museum codes now restrict or require disclosure of collecting in a curator's own field, but that is a recent position. The Metropolitan's Department of Arms and Armor was founded in 1912 under Bashford Dean, who had built a private armour collection of about 125 pieces before 1900 and continued collecting, and the arrangement was regarded at the time as an obvious qualification rather than a problem. **Why is the Metropolitan's della Robbia altarpiece called the Marquand Altarpiece?** Because Henry G. Marquand gave it to the museum in 1882, and the museum attached his name to the object in its own catalogue title. Marquand was also president of the museum's board of trustees, so the naming was done by an institution he governed. **Who was Abraham Bredius?** Director of the Mauritshuis from 1889 to 1909 and the leading Rembrandt authority of his generation. He owned the panel this archive records as the Camden attic portrait, lent it to the museum he directed from 1893, and it appears in the museum's 1910 abridged catalogue as entry 577, signed with the monogram RHL. **What does a provenance line not record?** The interest a person had in the object at the moment they judged it. Standard provenance fields carry a date, an owner and an event. Whether that owner was also the attributing scholar, the acquiring curator or the governing trustee has to be reconstructed from separate documents. **Was the Vinland Map ever accepted as genuine?** It was published by Yale in 1965 and defended for decades. McCrone Associates found anatase, a titanium dioxide first made commercially in the 1920s, in its ink in 1973, and Yale announced after an in-house study in 2021 that the map is a fake. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 186236, Andrea della Robbia, The Assumption of the Virgin (The Marquand Altarpiece), accession 82.4, credit line Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1882. Read as raw JSON, 5 September 2026. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 22741, armour garniture probably of Henry VIII, accession 19.131.1, credit line Purchase, William H. Riggs Gift and Rogers Fund, 1919; department Arms and Armor. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 35928, Armor for the Joust of Peace, accession 04.3.291a-q, credit line Rogers Fund, 1904, from the Duc de Dino collection. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art, online catalogue entry for The Assumption of the Virgin (The Marquand Altarpiece). - [5] Wikipedia, 'Bashford Dean', for the private armour collection of about 125 pieces by 1900, the 1904 guest curatorship organising the Duc de Dino collection, the honorary curatorship of 1906 and the founding curatorship dated 28 October 1912. Tertiary source, used for dates and cross-checked against the Metropolitan credit lines cited above. - [6] Wikipedia, 'Henry Gurdon Marquand', for the 1869 founding committee, the building committee and the presidency of the Metropolitan's board of trustees to his death in 1902. Tertiary source, used for role and dates only. - [7] Wikipedia, 'Abraham Bredius', for the directorship of the Mauritshuis from 1889 to 1909 and for Bredius's own collecting. Tertiary source, used for role and dates only. - [8] Sharon Waxman, 'Chasing the Lydian Hoard', Smithsonian Magazine, 14 November 2008, an excerpt from LOOT: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World, for the 1973 New York Times enquiry and for Kazim Akbiyikoglu's role in the recovery. - [9] David Gill, 'Lydian Hoard Conviction', Looting Matters, 13 February 2009, reporting the Usak court's sentence of nearly thirteen years for theft and embezzlement on the museum's director, with nine others receiving lesser terms. - [10] Alessandro Chechi, Anne Laure Bandle and Marc-Andre Renold, 'Case Lydian Hoard, Turkey and Metropolitan Museum of Art', ArThemis, Art-Law Centre, University of Geneva, for the out-of-court settlement and the 1.7 million dollar acquisition figure. - [11] Yale News, 'Analysis unlocks secret of the Vinland Map, it's a fake', 1 September 2021, for the in-house study and for the 1973 McCrone Associates finding of anatase in the ink.