Princes,Dukes,and Counts

In 2010 the Samuel H. Kress Foundation supported a grant for centralized provenance research on the Kress collection of Old Master paintings donated by the Foundation to repositories across the United States. The grant supports museum best practices in the field of provenance research and transparency in museum collection information—as promoted by the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors—and also advances the Samuel H. Kress Foundation's mission to serve the field of art history as practiced in American art museums. The project is based at the National Gallery of Art, which has taken a leadership role in the field of provenance research, facilitated by its location in Washington in close proximity to the United States National Archives, the Archives of American Art, and its own outstanding art historical research resources. The project is centered on a systematic approach to research that provides methodological efficiencies, economies of scale and a consistency in research standards that would not be capitalized upon if conducted independently by Kress repositories or on a case by case basis. The current article is a preliminary report on the project.