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Putting a spit shine on the Getty Provenance Index

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Thursday, February 19, 2015
4:15 pm - 5:30 pm
Eric Monson · Visualization & Interactive Systems (VIS)
Media Arts + Sciences Rendezvous

The Getty Provenance Index is an incredible resource for studying the history of art ownership and sales, consisting of "1.5 million records taken from source material such as archival inventories, auction catalogs, and dealer stock books." But, as researchers move from tracking an individual artwork over time, to studying historical art markets in the aggregate, the data is being used for things beyond the original intention of the database design, and some hard work is needed to wrangle the data into shape for the task. I¿ll talk about what it took to obtain and make about 188,000 records from 18th century French auction sales more usable for the Duke Art, Law and Markets Initiative (DALMI). The goal is to create a community through meeting face-to-face with other people who are interested in Media Arts + Sciences, sharing ideas / methods / resources, learning about the projects we're all working on, and socializing and getting to know each other better. Our featured speaker will give a short review of their project to give us a taste of what they're thinking about and engage everyone in a discussion on the topic. All those interested in Media Arts + Sciences at Duke are welcome! Drinks and light snacks are provided. Please enter through Bay 12 or Bay 9, 2nd floor.