Discourse as Provenance: Fragments (and a Framework) for Understanding Descriptive Data in Provenance Studies

As art history embraces initiatives for remodeling and “coding provenance”, we are urged to articulate a conceptual and practical framework for understanding “provenance as data.” In this paper traditionally established provenance data categories - e.g. objects, actors, values - together with less-structured explicative text detailing information like quality, reception, artistic value are considered. Provenance as data has been mostly framed as prescriptive and factual, with little attention given to how descriptive data found in sources like correspondence and diaries, might be structured, organized, and studied at scale. Yet, it is within this liminal space that we can critically examine acquisitions practices, cultural narratives, and discursive frameworks. Using AI tools to extract, structure, and interpret descriptive data, we problematize accepted discursive frameworks, and argue that attending to this “other” data is a necessary act of archival accountability.