Amedeo Modigliani, Femme assise à la robe bleue/Seated Woman in a Blue Dress, 1917 - 1919 Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet. Donated to the Nationalmuseum in 1951 by Oscar Stern, now part of the Moderna Museet collection. In the publication "Oscar Sterns samling av Fransk nutida konst, måleri och grafik", Göteborgs konstmuseum, 1944, the painting is listed on page 10 as: “no. 55 Modigliani, A, Seated Woman in a Blue Dress.” Currently, Moderna Museet has no further information on when or how Oscar Stern acquired the work for his collection.

Provenance and restitution

Moderna Museet’s mission as a government agency includes preserving, cataloguing and scientifically processing information about the objects that the museum acquires for the collection of art. The museum must also work for increased knowledge about the collection and its mediation.

An important part of the work with acquisitions is to research and document the history of an object from the time of its discovery or creation, and through the entire chain of owners until the acquisition takes place. Thus, the authenticity and ownership can be confirmed. This is called provenance.

In provenance research, you seek to obtain as complete an ownership history as possible, by collecting documentation that supports changes of ownership, exports and imports. It is important to take steps to ensure that an object that is subject to purchase, loan, exchange or gift was not obtained illegally or illegally exported, and that the current owner has legal possession of the object.

Special provenance means that there may be suspicions of a lack of information that ensures that the person who offers or has offered an object is or has been the legal owner of the object. According to the Washington Principles 1998 and the Terezin Declaration 2009, such objects must be returned – restituted – to their original owners or heirs.

The museum works systematically with provenance research

In 2021–2026, Moderna Museet intensifies its special provenance research. During this five-year period, the museum, amongst others, collects and compiles documentation about a number of high-priority works. We also inform about what new knowledge our research can provide.

Moderna Museet’s Return Policy

Item return policy (pdf in swedish)
Procedure description for handling externally incoming requests for return (pdf in swedish)
Legal and ethical framework (pdf in swedish)
Glossary (pdf in swedish)

Contact provenance and restitution

If you have questions about our work with provenance and restitution, or information you would like to share with Moderna Museet, please feel free to contact Annika Gunnarsson, Curator. Please write “Provenance” in the subject line.

a.gunnarsson@modernamuseet.se