ABSTRACT
Big data’s value to the arts, humanities, and other disciplines is contingent upon the integrity, verification, and safeguarding of its information—its “provenance.” For art museums, provenance research on its collections and acquisitions attempts to establish an unbroken chain of ownership from an object’s creation to its present owner. This information is traditionally either departmentally “siloed” within an institution or between institutions or, in Germany, for example, is the intellectual property of the researcher. With the advent of digital humanities, enabled by big data, the discipline of art history is encouraged to expand beyond its traditional bases in connoisseurship and history of collecting to encompass broader fields of study. 1
