Paper short abstract:

Armenian dealers are of interest to museums in establishing provenance of contested objects. Ottoman archives have conflicting materials on legality and illegality. Family papers show few traces of businesses. How can historians navigate responsibilities/legacies and obtain accurate histories?

Paper long abstract:

Many of the most influential art and antiquities dealers of the first half of the 20th century were Armenians originating from the Ottoman Empire. Use of the Ottoman archives for the purpose of ‘provenance studies’ is only just beginning. Museums, under pressure to unpick the entanglements of their objects, see the Armenian dealers as key to resolving provenance blackspots. Museums work to establish legality or illegality with little regard for the twists and turns of the life stories, - and certainly not the intentions, - of those who left these traces – and who, in several cases, went to the step of destroying any remnants of business correspondence or notetaking in their own archives. Most of these Armenians left the empire after the Hamidian Massacres of 1894-6, which killed over 200,000 Armenians. Other dealers or relatives that remained became embroiled in political murders. Family members, and supply networks, were eradicated in the Genocide of 1915, if they had survived the 1890s. This contribution begins to discuss the tensions inherent in the vast archival material that can be consulted when researching these individuals: from ‘Family Papers’, to correspondence in museum archives (and comments behind the scenes), to the Ottoman archival surveillance, to controversial goings-on in war time. It asks: how can we understand these life stories on their own terms, and show responsibility towards legacy (of people, and of museum objects), whilst also piecing together an accurate history?