Provenance LabLeuphana University Lüneburg
Team
Dr. Max Koss

Dr. Max Koss

Research Associate (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin)

Role

Research Associate (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin), Provenance Lab, Leuphana University. Core researcher on the Modern Migrants project.

Biography

Max Koss is an art and cultural historian from Berlin (East). His research examines the material and technical history of art — the infrastructures that produced and stabilized modern artworks, including technologies, exhibition formats, supply chains, collecting strategies, and documentation systems. He integrates economic history with art history and studies modern art as a product of media ecologies, material technologies, and transnational exchange. He joined the Provenance Lab in March 2021.

Education

  • PhD in Art History (2019) — University of Chicago. Dissertation: "The Art of the Periodical: Pan, Print Culture and the Birth of Modern Design in Germany, 1890–1900." Directed by Christine Mehring and Ralph Ubl (Basel).
  • MA in Art History — University of Chicago
  • MA in Art History — Courtauld Institute of Art, London (studied German Romantic art with Professor Joseph Leo Koerner)
  • BSc in Economic History (2004) — London School of Economics

Career

  • Research Associate, Provenance Lab, Leuphana University (since March 2021)
  • Doctoral Fellow, Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz — Max-Planck-Institut
  • Doctoral Fellow, Berlin State Museums / Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, CAHIM program at Kunstbibliothek (2016–2018)
  • Samuel H. Kress Foundation Provenance Research Fellow, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (2015–2016)
  • Internships/fellowships at: Art Institute of Chicago, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Art Library of the Berlin State Museums

Research Interests

  • European art of the 19th and 20th centuries
  • History of modern and contemporary German art
  • Periodical studies, print culture, and design history
  • Provenance research and linked open data
  • Material and technical history of art

Books

  • where paintings live: A Portrait of the Leimgruber Schenk Collection (2024)
  • The Art of the Periodical: Pan, Print Culture and the Birth of Modern Design (2019, dissertation)

Fellowships & Awards

  • Edward A. Maser Fellowship (2017)
  • AAMD/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Provenance Research Fellowship (2015)
  • DAAD Graduate Fellowship (2014)
  • Smart Family Foundation Fellowship, University of Chicago
  • Mellon Foundation support
  • CAHIM Doctoral Fellowship, Berlin State Museums

Contact