Art Tracks: Standardizing Digital Provenance Documentation for Cultural Objects

FAIN: PR-234554-16

Carnegie Institute (Pittsburgh, PA 15213-4007)
Neil Kulas (Project Director: June 2015 to August 2016)
Katie Reilly (Project Director: August 2016 to July 2017)
Sarah Minnaert (Project Director: July 2017 to September 2019)

The development of a standard for the digital sharing of provenance information on works of art through structured Linked Open Data, which will improve the usefulness of provenance data for scholarly research, exhibition programming, and museum collection management.

Art Tracks is Carnegie Museum of Art’s (CMOA) project of to standardize, digitize, and convert the provenance of works of art into structured, Linked Open Data. Phase One of this project has successfully proven the ability of Linked Open Data to create an infrastructure for sharing museum data, with field wide benefit to provenance research. Phase Two will support the extension and full integration with Linked Open Data, add bibliographic references, and convert the date logic to use existing open standards from the library community. CMOA will partner with leaders in the museum field to further test and refine the standard before promoting Art Tracks dissemination and adoption of the CMOA Provenance Standard. CMOA will strongly support the use of Linked Open Data to enrich provenance, support the interconnectedness of the museum community, improve the usefulness of provenance data, and promote new scholarship through an innovative and collaborative approach to provenance research.