Title: Network Dimensions in the Getty Provenance Index,
Abstract: In this article we make a case for a systematic application of complex
network science to study art market history and more general collection
dynamics. We reveal social, temporal, spatial, and conceptual network
dimensions, i.e. network node and link types, previously implicit in the Getty
Provenance Index (GPI). As a pioneering art history database active since the
1980s, the GPI provides online access to source material relevant for research
in the history of collecting and art markets. Based on a subset of the GPI, we
characterize an aggregate of more than 267,000 sales transactions connected to
roughly 22,000 actors in four countries over 20 years at daily resolution from
1801 to 1820. Striving towards a deeper understanding on multiple levels we
disambiguate social dynamics of buying, brokering, and selling, while observing
a general broadening of the market, where large collections are split into
smaller lots. Temporally, we find annual market cycles that are shifted by
country and obviously favor international exchange. Spatially, we differentiate
near-monopolies from regions driven by competing sub-centers, while uncovering
asymmetries of international market flux. Conceptually, we track dynamics of
artist attribution that clearly behave like product categories in a very slow
supermarket. Taken together, we introduce a number of meaningful network
perspectives dealing with historical art auction data, beyond the analysis of
social networks within a single market region. The results presented here have
inspired a Linked Open Data conversion of the GPI, which is currently in
process and will allow further analysis by a broad set of researchers.