Art Tracks
Carnegie Museum of Art
March 4, 2014

The Art Tracks Team:
David Newbury
Lead Developer
Tracey Berg-Fulton
Data Nerd
Travis Snyder
Collections Database Administrator

Our Advisors:
Lulu Lippincott
Curator, Fine Art
Costas Karakatsanis
Provenance Researcher
And many other advisors

What is Art Tracks?
An Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
project to digitize and visualize provenance
information.
—Three year project
—50% complete

What does our provenance look like now?

Digital Provenance Records at CMOA
Durand-Ruel, Paris, August 23, 1872 [1];
Catholina Lambert, New Jersey;
Lambert sale, American Art Association, Plaza Hotel, New York, NY,
February 21, 1916 until February 24, 1916, no. 67;
Durand-Ruel, Paris, until at least 1930;
purchased by Simon Bauer, Paris, by June 1936 [2];
anonymous sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., February 25, 1970, no. 19 [3];
Sam Salz, Inc., New York, NY;
purchased by Museum, May 1971.
NOTES:
[1] bought from the artist.
[2] Listed and illustrated in "List of Property Removed from France
during the War 1939-1945" (no. 7114, as belonging to Simon Bauer).
[3] "Highly Important Impressionist, Post-Impressionist &
Modern Paintings and Drawings", illustrated.

What is good about Provenance right now?
—AAM standard
—NEPIP portal
—Getty Provenance index
—The internet makes finding data possible
—Provenance is a very active field

What are the problems with provenance?
—Provenance isn’t searchable
—Provenance isn’t (really) standardized
—Provenance records aren't consistent
—Provenance research is hard.

What are the existing global standards?
AAM suggested standard
...the provenanace is listed in chronological order, beginning with the earliest known owner.
Life dates of owners, if known, are enclosed in brackets.
Uncertain information is indicated by the terms "possibly" or "probably" and explained in footnotes.
Dealers, auction houses, or agents are enclosed in parentheses to distinguish them from private owners.
Relationships between owners and methods of transactions are indicated by punctuation:
a semicolon is used to indicate that the work passed directly between two owners
(including dealers, auction houses, or agents),
and a period is used to seperate two owners (including dealers, auction houses, or agents)
if a direct transfer did not occur or is not known to have occured.
Footnotes are used to document or clarify information.

What are the existing global standards?
—Text, usually in the AAM standard form
—NGA has structured records in TMS

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN

What
provenance
looks like:

Acquisition Methods:
Controlled Vocabulary
—"purchased by"
—"gift of"
—"by descent to"
purchased by Simon Bauer, Paris, France, by 1936 [2];
[2] Listed and illustrated in "List of Property Removed from France during the War 1939-1945"
(no. 7114, as belonging to Simon Bauer).

Acquisition Methods:

Party:
Name, life dates, titles, relationships
—Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. [1909-1988]
—Michel Monet, his son
—Thomas George Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook
purchased by Simon Bauer, Paris France, by 1936 [2];
[2] Listed and illustrated in "List of Property Removed from France during the War 1939-1945"
(no. 7114, as belonging to Simon Bauer).

Party:

Location:
Building, City, State, Country
—New York, NY
—France
—Highclere Castle, West Berkshire, England
purchased by Simon Bauer, Paris, France, by 1936 [2];
[2] Listed and illustrated in "List of Property Removed from France during the War 1939-1945"
(no. 7114, as belonging to Simon Bauer).

Location:

Dates:
Period of ownership
—January 1, 1995
—until the 15th century
—sometime between 1885 and 1895 until 1950
purchased by Simon Bauer, Paris, France, by 1936 [2];
[2] Listed and illustrated in "List of Property Removed from France during the War 1939-1945"
(no. 7114, as belonging to Simon Bauer).

John Doe, 1995

John Doe, by 1995

John Doe, after 1995

John Doe, until 1995

John Doe, until at least 1995

John Doe, until sometime before 1995

John Doe, in 1960

John Doe, 1950 until 2000

Footnotes:
Additional descriptive information
—Durand Ruel stock no. D1343
—See curatorial file for more information
—Her birth name was Ellen Mary Cassatt
purchased by Simon Bauer, Paris, France, by 1936 [2];
[2] Listed and illustrated in "List of Property Removed from France during the War 1939-1945"
(no. 7114, as belonging to Simon Bauer).

What should it look like?
{
"id": 1011873,
"category": "Painting",
"medium": "oil on canvas",
"title": "The Full-Length Mirror",
"accession_number": "65.17.1",
"image": "http://it-svr-emu03/imucma/imu.php?request=multimedia&irn=10183",
"creation_date": "1910-01-01",
"artist": {
"name": "Pierre Bonnard",
"location": {
"lat": 48.69096,
"lng": 9.14062,
"name": "Europe",
"geonameId": 6255148
}
},

What should it look like?
—JSON API
—LIDO
—Linked Open Data
—Unstructured text blobs

JSON API
Application Programming Interface
A machine readable interface for accessing the
collections information at CMOA.

LIDO
Lightweight Information Describing Objects
XML based data format
Current best practice for museum data interchange
Used by Google Art Project, among others

Linked Open Data
CIDOC-CRM
CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model
ICOM standard for museum Linked Open Data
For connecting to external information
For publishing information for others to link to
Aspirational: future of museum data

Unstructured Text
Human readable
Will need to be supported indefinitely
Current state of Collection Management Systems

How are we getting from here to there?
—CMOA provenance standard
—museum_provenance
—Elysa

CMOA provenance standard
Formalization of AAM standard
Designed for both human and machine readability
Same structure, just stricter
Draft document available

museum_provenance library
https://github.com/cmoa/museum_provenance

Elysa tool
not yet released

Live Demonstration.

What have we done?
Created a digital standard for provenance
Developed a way to digitally publish provenance
(almost)
Data visualizations to help inform

What haven’t we done?
User-friendly search interface
Fixed the provenance research problem
Made sharing this information easy
Gotten other institutions involved

What have we learned?
Linked Open Data is essential to do this well
We need to link our CMS and provenance via an API
We need to think about institutional authority
We need a bibliography standard for provenance

What have we learned?
Museums are not thinking about provenance
in the context of digital humanities.
The amount of information is intimidating.
What sort of questions are possible/easy?

How can you help?
Use our data.
Tell us what we don't know.

How can you help?
Let us use your data.
Tell us what you want to know.

How can you help?
Connect our institutions.
—Students
—Contacts
—Shared data

Questions?

Show & Tell

Acquisition vs Size

Creation vs Size

Creation vs Acquisition

Creation vs Acquisition