A talk on how we're structuring provenance for computers, and discovering the potential of provenance for DH research. Slides were built largely by David Newbury with supplememtnation from Tracey Berg-Fulton. Tracey Berg-Fulton delivered this presentation at the Keystone Digital Humanities conference at the University of Pennsylvania on July 24, 2015

1. Art Tracks
Carnegie Museum of Art
July 24, 2015

2. The Art Tracks Team:
Tracey Berg-Fulton
Data Nerd
(@BergFulton)
David Newbury
Lead Developer
(@workergnome)
Travis Snyder
Collections Database
Administrator

3. Our Advisors:
Neil Kulas
Head of Digital
Louise (Lulu) Lippincott, Ph.D
Curator, Fine Art
Costas Karakatsanis
Provenance Researcher
And many other advisors

4. What is Art Tracks?
An Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
project to digitize and visualize provenance
information.
—Three year project
—80% complete

6. HAVE
YOU SEEN
THIS MAN?
Pietro Perugino, St. Augustine with Members of the Confraternity of Perugia, c. 1500.
Carnegie Museum of Art, Acquired through the generosity of Mrs. Alan M. Scaife.

8. Augustus Wijnantz, Interieur van de Gotische Zaal, paleis Kneuterdijk, Den Haag, met de schilderijencollectie van Willem II, 1846, Rijksmuseum, Acquired 1995.

9. 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.

10. What is good about Provenance right now?
—AAM standard.
—Internet Archive, Gallica, HathiTrust, etc.
—NEPIP portal.
—Getty Provenance index.

11. Unlawful Appropriation
—Created before 1946
—Were acquired by the museum
before 1932
—underwent a change of
ownership between 1932 and
1946
—were or could have been in
Europe between 1932-1946

12. What is good about Provenance right now?
—AAM standard.
—Internet Archive, Gallica, HathiTrust, etc.
—NEPIP portal.
—Getty Provenance index.

13. What's not so good about provenance?
—Provenance isn’t searchable.
—Provenance isn’t (really) standardized.
—Provenance research is hard. And expensive. And
slow.

14. 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.
Nancy H. Yeide, Konstantin Akinsha, and Amy L. Walsh. The AAM Guide to Provenance Research.
American Association of Museum, Washington DC, 2001, pp. 33-34.

15. What are the existing global standards?
—Text, usually in the AAM standard form.
—NGA, Smithsonian have structured records in
TMS.

16. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

17. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

18. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN

19. Breaking
down
provenance

20. 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).

21. Acquisition Methods:

22. 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).

23. Party:

24. 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).

25. Location:

26. 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).

29. John Doe, 1995

30. John Doe, by 1995

31. John Doe, after 1995

32. John Doe, until 1995

33. John Doe, until at least 1995

34. John Doe, until sometime before 1995

35. John Doe, in 1960

36. John Doe, 1950 until 2000

37. 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).

39. 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
}
},

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

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

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

43. 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

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

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

46. CMOA provenance standard
Formalization of AAM standard
Designed for both human and machine readability
Same structure, just stricter
Document available at:
museumprovenance.org/standard

47. museum_provenance
github.com/cmoa/museum_provenance

48. Elysanot yet released
Released June 24, 2015.

49. github.com/cmoa/elysa

50. Check yourself
—Death is permanent.
—Babies generally don't own
art.
—Dates are tricky, but provide a
check and balance.
—Timelining exhibition data
highlights opportunities for
ownership clarification.
Simon Vouet, The Toilet of Venus, c. 1640, Carnegie Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs.
Horace Binney Hare.

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

55. 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

56. What have we learned?
—Museums are not thinking about provenance in
the context of digital humanities.
—The amount of information is intimidating.
—Our data is not as good as we think it is.

57. What haven’t we done?
—Fixed the provenance research problem
—User-friendly search interface
—Made sharing this information easy
—Linked the data to other authorities

58. Next Steps:
—EDTF Support.
—LOD for entity disambiguation.
—Bibliography support.
—Deploy Elysa at other institutions.
—Start working with multi-museum collections.
—The Northbrook Project.

59. How can you help?
—Connect our institutions.
—Students
—Contacts
—Shared data
—Give us software feedback.
—Publish your provenance.
—Help others find provenance (github.com/
provenancecollaborative)

60. STAY IN
TOUCH
museumprovenance.org
github.com/cmoa
Twitter: @BergFulton, @Workergnome
Detail of H. Rebele, Bob, the Vigilant Fire Company's Dog, 1863, Carnegie Museum of Art,
By appropriation.