Joshua Gomez
Senior Software Engineer
Getty Research Institute
Emily Pugh
Digital Humanities Specialist
Getty Research Institute
The Getty Provenance Index records the ownership and sale of artwork as documented in auction house sales catalogs, archival inventories, dealer stock books, and listings of public collections, with some records reaching as far back as the 16th century. In a pioneering effort to employ computers in art history research, the Getty converted the print publication to an online database in the mid 1980’s. Thirty years later, the system is now undergoing another transformation. The six heterogeneous flat file databases that make up the Provenance Index will be mapped to the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) and released as Linked Open Data. This new data model, along with a new user interface, will broaden the scope of possible research questions by enabling new exploratory and computational research methods. This presentation will describe the project background, reveal some of the work in progress, and outline the project roadmap.