21st Century Provenance: Lessons Learned Building Art Tracks

Standardizing Museum
Provenance for the
Twenty-First Century
Lessons Learned Building Art Tracks
David Newbury
Yale Center for British Art
February 27th, 2017
Standardizing Museum Provenance — David Newbury (@workergnome) 1

Thank you all for
inviting me here to talk.

Art Tracks, Phase I
Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
ca. 2013-2015
Originally, Art Tracks was
a data visualization project.
Only, we didn't have data.

Traditional Provenance
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.

museum_provenance library
https://github.com/arttracks/
museum_provenance
MIT License, standalone Ruby library. v. 0.1.1

Elysa
A UI tool for museum
professionals.

What comes next?
Collaboration and formalization
through Linked Data.

Why do museums
need Linked Data?
(When thinking about
their collections.)

Linked Open Data.
I'm not here to
talk about if we
should share our data.

Why do museums
share their data?

Are museums
Publishers?
Yes.
But we do more than publish
information—we generate our own.

Are museums
Researchers?
Yes.
But we don't generate random
information, we research specific
objects.

Museums
are Collections.
We don't just collect.
We research, collect, and preserve
information about our objects, as
well as the events, people, and
topics that give them context.

The Promise of Linked Data:
[The] creation of a common framework that allows data
to be shared and reused across application, enterprise,
and community boundaries, to be processed
automatically by tools as well as manually, including
revealing possible new relationships among pieces of
data.
— W3C Semantic Web Working Group

Linked Data:
Where is this
magical future?

What doesn't Linked Data do?
Enable
Web Scale AI

Create Easy
Interoperability

Automate
Reconciliation

Reduce
our Workload

An awkward
moment goes here.
(This could be a very short talk.)

Linked Data is
not a magic bullet.
It's one of a many possible abstract
data models, each of which have
tradeoffs.

Art Tracks, Phase II
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
ca. 2016-2017
How to express provenance information as:
• Linked Open Data
• JSON data structure
• Standardized text
All three forms must contain
the same information, and
we must be able to convert
between them.

Content Mgmt. Systems
What we have.

Scholarship, Shared Online
What we want.

Linked Open Data
What we're talking about.

Documents & Graphs
Two different shapes for the same content.

Documents, JSON & Graphs
Three different shapes for the same content.

Mary Cassatt, Young Women Picking Fruit.
Carnegie Museum of Art.

Carnegie Museum of Art, 1894.
Mary Cassatt [1844-1926], France; Galeries Durand-Ruel,
Paris, France, by August 1892 [1]; Durand-Ruel Galleries,
New York, NY, 1895; purchased by Department of Fine
Arts, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, October 1922.
Notes:
[1]. Recorded in stock book in August 1892.

The Document
The Timeline

Mary Cassatt [1844-1926], France; Galeries Durand-Ruel,
Paris, France, by August 1892 [1]; Durand-Ruel Galleries,
New York, NY, 1895; purchased by Department of Fine
Arts, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, October 1922.
Notes:
Authorities:
Mary Cassatt: see http://viaf.org/viaf/2478969/
Galeries Durand-Ruel: see http://viaf.org/viaf/153354503
Durand-Ruel Galleries: see http://viaf.org/viaf/134060200
Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute: see http://viaf.org/viaf/147742484
France: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/1000070
Paris, France: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/7008038
New York, NY: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/7007567
Pittsburgh, PA: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/7013927

Reason #1:
Linking to Other
Authorities
and the Local Heroes Problem

Authority,
Identity, & Trust.
We're making authoritative
assertions about identity.
We want to be the "source of truth"
for the objects in our collections.

Authority isn't free.
Maintaining authority takes
enormous time and resources.

The world is vast.
To fully describe everything that
connects to our collection, we
must describe the universe.

Budgets are...less vast.
How can we be authoritative
without being encyclopedic?

Asserted Authority.
When you want to be
the authority of record
for something or someone.

Delegated Authority.
When you want to point to
someone who you trust to be
the authority of record.

Reluctant Authority.
When you cannot find
an authority you trust.

MicroAuthority
A minimalist
CSV-based authority file
Enables small institutions
to connect to their local heroes

Mary Cassatt [1844-1926], France;
Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris, France, by August 1892 [1];
Durand-Ruel Galleries, New York, NY, 1895;
purchased by Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute,
Pittsburgh, PA, October 1922.
Notes:
Authorities:
Mary Cassatt: see http://viaf.org/viaf/2478969/
Galeries Durand-Ruel: see http://viaf.org/viaf/153354503
Durand-Ruel Galleries: see http://viaf.org/viaf/134060200
Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute: see http://viaf.org/viaf/147742484
France: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/1000070
New York, NY: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/7007567
Pittsburgh, PA: see http://vocab.getty.edu/tgn/7013927

Reason #2:
Shared Semantics
How do we know we're talking about the same thing?

JSON Data
Structure
This is understandable,
If you're me.
But you're not me.

Linked Data as
Documentation
When I say "Transfer of Custody",
I mean...

JSON-LD &
CIDOC-CRM
This is more complex,
but that complexity
is documented.

What about
the gaps?
Nothing is comprehensive.

museumprovenance.org/reference/acquisition_methods

Galeries Durand-Ruel, Paris, France, by August 1892 [1];
Notes:
Authorities:
Durand-Ruel Galleries: #1 http://viaf.org/viaf/134060200

Reason #3:
Minimum Viable
Collaboration

Getty Provenance Index
Remodel Project
Similar project, different goals.

Four levels
of provenance?

Reason #4:
The unattainability
of complete knowledge.

Internal Transaction Events
(Level Four)*

To Recap:
1. Shared Authority
2. Shared Understanding
3. Easy Collaboration
4. Planning for the Future

The Future?

Thank You.
For more information, visit:
www.museumprovenance.org
Initial funding for Art Tracks was provided in part by a generous grant by the
Institute of Museum and Library Services. Funding for Phase II has been
provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities with additional
research support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.

21st Century Provenance: Lessons Learned Building Art Tracks

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