Exploring Provenance: Research Methodology and Digital Discoverability

This session addresses aspects of provenance research on cultural property from different angles. The first presentation given by Karen Halliday details research methods and findings on displaced monographs within Canadian cultural institutions, while the second presentation given by Annie Rana and Eric Hormell provides an overview of an undertaking at the Getty Research Institute to increase access to digitized art auction catalogs. Themes of the session include examining the availability of primary and secondary sources for provenance research, creative collaborations with librarians, archivists, and researchers both within and across institutions, as well as the challenges of reconciling dispersed physical materials and varying metadata on digital surrogates. In exploring the process of enhancing access to primary art history sources and through an exemplar of tracing the history of looted books, the session aims to inform and support research into the provenance of cultural objects. This session took place on May 12, 2021, as part of the ARLIS/NA Virtual Conference hosted by the ARLIS/NA MOQ Chapter.