Digital Provenance Symposium 2017

Carnegie Museum of Art hosted Digital Provenance Symposium 2017 to showcase innovative approaches to problems around the representation of events in digital collections and discussed standardization, collaboration, and communication across the cultural heritage field.

This session brought together experts from the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, National Gallery of Art, Boston University, University of Pittsburgh, Getty Research Institute, and others joined CMOA’s staff for a day of sharing and planning for the future.

Thank you to all the individuals and institutions who participated in making this event a success. See Digital Provenance Symposium 2016 for more information about the first edition in this series.

Presentations

Listen to video presentations on current projects that use digital methods to track objects over time and space including the intellectual and technological structures supporting event-based art history:

• Elizabeth Gorayeb, Executive Director, and Caitlin Sweeney, Senior Research Associate, of Wildenstein Plattner Institute, shared the development of an online database of catalog raisonnés and the intricacies of working with international partners.
• Jennifer Henel, Curatorial Coordinator, presented the National Gallery of Art’s online publication of Artist’s Pigments and their attempts to create a database of scientific findings.
• Tom Scutt, Digital Manager, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art discussed the companion online publication for the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769–2018.
• Jodi Cranston, Professor, Boston University presented Mapping Paintings: Or, How to Breathe Life into Provenance.
• Alison Langmead, Clinical Associate Professor and Director, Visual Media Workshop at the University of Pittsburgh, presented Itinera: People, Objects, and Sites.
• Akemi May, Assistant Curator of Fine Arts at Carnegie Museum of Art, and Costas Karakatsanis, Researcher, Fine Arts at Carnegie Museum of Art, presented Standardizing Museum Provenance for Data Visualization about the in gallery demonstration of Art Tracks using the Northbrook Collection as a proof of concept.

Discussions

Listen to video discussions among panelists and colleagues:

• Panel: Data-Rich Museum: Collection Data and Internal Change
  Moderated by Katie Reilly of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Stuart Alter from Newfields, Sheila Hoffman from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Louise Lippincott from Carnegie Museum of Art.
• Panel: Museum Collections and the Digital Humanities
  Moderated by Kristen Regina, Philadelphia Museum of Art, with Matthew Lincoln of the Getty Research Institute, Alex Taylor, University of Pittsburgh, and Sheila Carey, Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN).
• Discussion: Object-Based, Event-Driven Art History
  Facilitated by David Newbury, Enterprise Software and Data Architect, J. Paul Getty Trust, the conversation surrounded the future of technology in museums, the necessity for institutional commitment and support, and the desire for enhanced visitor engagement and more effective collection research.

Support

The Art Tracks Digital Provenance Project is made possible in part by a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional research support provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation (external link), the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (external link), and the Richard C. von Hess Foundation.