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Triple Stores
Given that MySQL is not well-suited as a triple store, I think it would make sense to migrate and append Joshua’s data in a non-relational, triple store format. The Linked Jazz Project at Pratt uses Apache Marmotta for their triples, and I’m thinking this would be good as a solution for the Whitney as well. Prof. Pattuelli has said there’s space for me to experiment on the Linked Jazz Marmotta server. The opendata.whitney.org server is another option; additionally, data from one server could always be migrated to another eventually.
Is Marmotta too complicated, though? What is its user interface like? Will discuss at meeting w/everyone on Thursday.
First Steps?
First need to run script that will check gift and donation csv files against artist.csv and remove dupes.
OpenRefine
I’m going to start playing around in OpenRefine to see if I can combine some csv files, or at least get rid of duplicate entries within files:
Enriching Provenance
What info does the NYTimes have on Provenance-related constituents? I’m checking the API for anything interesting. Maybe more names (related entities) could be pulled from the NYT’s ‘name.value element:’
Another project idea would be to query DPLA for digital archival purchase records from the Whitney Studio Club available on DCMNY. It’s kind of cool to see how much these pieces sold for. Poppies by Ernest Fiene, for instance, went for for $100:
Not really sure if this would yield great visualizations – could maybe pull images? Also, maybe this would be redundant if TMS object records are already connected to objects in WhitneyCat (although this doesn’t seem to be the case?). I am interested in the issue of how to connect digital archival materials with collection objects they relate to. Maybe adding links to the URLs of the archival documents on DCMNY to the object/person URIs? It is interesting how much of the paperwork for these early purchases/donations is online. The descriptions of some of these archival objects also give some interesting context to the purchases.
Third project idea: map the galleries that contributed to the Founding Collection that are still around, using NY.gov data: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Recreation/New-York-City-Art-Galleries/tgyc-r5jh
Not many of them are still around though…so maybe not.
Querying Wikidata: Not sure if it could be the basis of a separate project. Their “instance of: art gallery” property is interesting:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7990321
Another idea – link constituents to Archives of American Art records, since they seem to have the richest info on early 20th century galleries and have a lot of digitized collections. They don’t have an API, though, so I’m not sure how easy it would be to extract their content. Additionally, the images on their website are loaded through a viewer (rather than being downloadable JPEGs:
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/aca-galleries-records-8772/more#section_1
Archives of American Art is sometimes the only place I can find info on these galleries. I’ve found some with ULAN and/or VIAF records, but that’s the extent of the content I can pick out.
