Events

Workshop - The Secret Life of Symbols and Numerals

From 18th to 19th October 2024, the workshop on the study of the reconstruction of the Hugo Helbing collection and the whereabouts of the missing works will take place at the Berlin State Library in cooperation with the Department of Digital Provenance Research of the TU Berlin. 

Number sequences, ciphers, abbreviations and letter codes on the back of paintings, works on paper, sculptures or picture frames. The apparently arbitrary sequences of numbers or letters hide many mysteries not only in the objects themselves - they also regularly appear in historical sources on the art trade. When and for what purpose were they recorded? Do they follow certain patterns? What significance do they have for provenance research?

Since the “Helbing Art Research Project” began in March 2022, those involved in the project have received many inquiries from research and trade about the interpretation of numbers, abbreviations or ciphers. With the gradual digitization and publication of historical source material on the art market, it is becoming increasingly clear that auction houses and art dealers worked with sometimes very complex annotation and numbering systems that are very difficult to interprete. 

Using concise and precise case studies from research practice, the following questions will be discussed in this working workshop: Which abbreviations and ciphers in sources and on (possibly corresponding) objects can already be resolved today, and how? Where do previous research methods reach their limits? Where does the resolution fail and why? Can patterns be recognized and solutions developed? Which tools and documentation platforms would be conceivable for this?  10-minute short lectures on individual case studies will be used to form the basis for an immediately following technical discussion.

Participants are especially invited to present problem constellations, work in progress or best practice approaches that have already been developed and to present collected, repeatedly appearing groups of numbers or letters, abbreviations or other “codes” and to discuss them together.

Conception and organization:

Meike Hopp (ECDF und TU Berlin)
Jan Thomas Köhler (Helbing Projekt)
Anja Matsuda (Helbing Projekt)
Johannes Nathan (Helbing Projekt)

More information can be found //here.