The Getty Research Institute announced an update to its index of provenance-related research today. The remodeled version now offers more than 12 million records available to the public.
The Getty Provenance Index (GPI) initially launched in the 1980s to keep track of the ownership history of each artwork in the museum’s collection. Since then, it has become an integral part of the Getty’s research on provenance, collecting, and art markets. Today, the records included in the GPI extend well beyond the Getty itself.
These resources have been drawn from rare primary source materials such as archival inventories, auction catalogs, and dealer stock books dating as far back as the 16th century. They include records on art dealers, collectors, and the broader art trade. The GPI includes a particularly strong dataset on European and American paintings.
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Following a decade of redevelopment, the digital database is now making some 12 million records more accessible and publicly available for the first time through the Linked Open Data platform.
“The multi-year project to transform the Getty Provenance Index into Linked Open Data (LOD) responds to the increasing interest in and relevance of issues of provenance and collecting histories worldwide and incorporates the significant advances in digital technology of the last years,” Sandra van Ginhoven, the GRI’s head of collecting and provenance, told ARTnews of the project in an email.
A major feature of the new LOD platform is that it will expose “networks of relationships captured in primary source documents that help trace objects through people, time, and space,” van Ginhoven said. “Getty is committed to creating and disseminating resources that support provenance research and open new and inspiring pathways to expand our understanding of art and its varied histories.”
Additionally, the Getty is launching Tracing Art, a new interactive tool that allows users to explore the historical trajectories of artworks through visual means.
This documentation can help experts in the field further investigate patterns in art markets, object movement, the history of art collecting and trading, and restitution and repatriation debates. These efforts, which stand to further enable the scholarship advancement and new discoveries in art history, come as the field of provenance research continues to expand among institutions.
