David Newbury
Senior Director, Public Technologies
Getty
Lily Pregill
Collection Platforms & Data Director
Getty
Over the past 40 years, Getty has maintained and expanded the Getty Provenance Index (GPI), a field-leading resource that tracks art sales through the digitization and transcription of dealer stock books, sales catalogs, and archival inventories. In 2016, Getty committed to “remodeling” this invaluable resource using linked data to expose the complex network of relationships inherent in the history of the art market. Nine years, three Getty teams, three vendors, and 12 million records later, Getty has launched the new GPI. The new platform is a radical shift from the legacy platform, offering a data-first approach to support new forms of analysis and computational methods. It was met with mixed reviews from the research community, heralded as both “amazing” and “rubbish.” The briefing will share what was learned about managing various complexities (including organizational, data model, and userbase), and how they were dealt with.
https://www.getty.edu/databases-tools-and-technologies/provenance/
https://www.getty.edu/tracingart/
