... Open Art Data ...

Oct 30, 2025

DATASET Getty GPI merged with Wikidata art people and galleries IDs

DATASET

DATASET_GPIulanWIKIDATA_FULL.csv brings together actors in provenance entities from the Getty Provenance Index (GPI) with corresponding Wikidata identifiers for artists, collectors, dealers, galleries, and auction houses (not museums).

VIEW DATASET HERE

The file contains 61,419 records, each representing a person or organization appearing in the GPI.
Every record retains six key GPI fields and is enriched, where available, with open-data identifiers and descriptions from Wikidata.

DOWNLOAD DATASET CSV

Merge details

Primary key: ULANurl (Getty ULAN link)
Join type: Left join — all GPI rows are preserved, even if no Wikidata match exists
Wikidata coverage: 11,146 matched entities out of 24,881 unique ULANs (≈45%)
Columns included: All original GPI columns plus Wikidata fields such as
- item (Wikidata QID)
- itemLabel (name in Wikidata)
- itemDescription
- External identifiers: VIAF, GND, ISNI, RKD, Proveana, and others

Use
This dataset enables cross-referencing between the Getty Provenance Index and Wikidata, facilitating linked-data research on art-market actors, networks, and provenance patterns.

It is particularly useful for identifying entities appearing in both GPI and open knowledge graphs, enriching provenance chains with additional biographical and institutional context.

It is also useful for identifying GAPS in the data (for example, missing ULAN codes in either GPI or WIKIDATA) and for targeting useful actions to improve data coherence and completeness.

📘 Columns from the Getty Provenance Index (GPI)

URI Linkedart json – Persistent URI for the Linked Art JSON record
name – Preferred name of the person or organization
ULANurl – Getty ULAN identifier in URL form (merge key)
starId – Internal GPI identifier
birthYear – Year of birth (where applicable)
biography GPI – Textual biographical note from GPI

🟦 Columns from Wikidata

item – Full Wikidata entity URI (e.g., http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q5582)
itemLabel – English label (name of the entity)
itemDescription – Short descriptive phrase from Wikidata
ulan – ULAN numeric identifier used in Wikidata (e.g., 500044458)
VIAF – Virtual International Authority File ID (P214)
GND – German National Library identifier (P227)
Lexikon – Künstlerlexikon der Schweiz identifier (P9585)
Proveana – Proveana database ID (P9434)
RKD – RKDartists ID (P650)
ArtHist – arthist.net identifier (P10015 or equivalent, if present)
BritishM – British Museum person or org ID (P1711 or similar)
ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier (P213)
LoC – Library of Congress ID (P244)
BNF – Bibliothèque nationale de France ID (P268)
YadVashem – Yad Vashem Holocaust database ID (P6890)
SNAC – Social Networks and Archival Context ID (P3430)
Joconde – French museum catalogue ID (P347)
BiografischPortaal – Biografisch Portaal van Nederland ID (P651)
ULANurl_wikidata – Getty ULAN URL as represented within Wikidata

Merge details
- Primary key: ULANurl (Getty ULAN link)
- Join type: Left join — all GPI rows are preserved, even if no Wikidata match exists
- Wikidata coverage: 11,146 matched entities out of 24,881 unique ULANs (≈45%)

Oct 29, 2025

Waldmüller

part of a series...

Holocaust art research digital tools: Lempertz and artworks listed in the (defunct) Nazi Era Internet Portal

Art provenance research tools:

The Cologne auction house of Lempertz was included in the Art Looting Investigation Unit Red Flag list of names in 1946. In recent times, the name has appeared in connection to several claims for restitution of artworks. Until recently American museums published artworks that had gaps in their provenance 1933-1945 in a database called NEPIP (Nazi Era Provenance Internet Portal) (https://www.aam-us.org/programs/the-nazi-era-provenance-internet-portal-nepip-archive/)

This video shows artworks gathered from NEPIP and other sources that mention the word "Lempertz" in the provenance published by museums.

Note: Some of the mentions concern the German auction house. Some do not. Some concern transactions prior to 1933, others after 1933. Inclusion on the list does not mean that the artwork was looted or sold in a forced sale, only that it contains a specific word.

Link to database used in video: https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/9769949/ (Enter the word or name you want to search for in the box)

German sales catalogues published by the Getty Provenance Index and Heidelberg University tend to stop or peter out after 1945, so it is very difficult to use digital tools to analyze Lempertz and other auction sales in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s when Nazi looted artworks were laundered via auction houses with little scrutiny.

Gathering mentions of Lempertz (and other auction houses) in museums provenances is one workaround for this lack of transparency.

(photo credit from MFA, Boston museum, The Cumaean Sibyl Donato Creti (Italian (Bolognese), 1671–1749) about 1730 ACCESSION NUMBER 1984.138 PROVENANCE November 23-25, 1983, anonymous (German private collector) sale, Lempertz, Cologne, lot 1482. 1984, sold by Piero Corsini, New York and London, to the MFA. (Accession Date: April 11, 1984) https://collections.mfa.org/objects/34617/the-cumaean-sibyl