Countless objects have been sold at Julius Böhler in the more than 140 years since its foundation in 1880. Until digitalisation in the 1990s, every work of art was catalogued using index cards and illustrated as well, if possible. The result is a unique archive.
In 2015 we handed the index cards on 30,000 objects together with 8,000 photo portfolios from the years 1903 to 1948 to the Central Institute for Art History in Munich for research purposes. The project was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).
Since 2017 the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation has been sponsoring the processing of the collection. In 2019 work began on combining all the information on one database. The work has now been completed; approximately five million records are accessible online – a unique treasure for research of the most diverse kind.
Congratulations on the completion of this Herculean task to the team of the ZI that has done a quite outstanding job, providing an exciting excursion into the history of the German art trade.
Take yourself off on a journey through time, too!
Dealers, collectors and museums: the Kunsthandlung Julius Böhler
in Munich, Lucerne, Berlin and New York. Indexing and
documentation of the artworks dealt with between 1903 and 1994.
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Link to database
photo: © ZI
