Previously-Held or Context-Specific Assertions

Table of Contents

Introduction

It is useful for research to have access to historical information, such as which artist was previously believed to be the creator of a work, or previous valuations of an object. The majority of use cases, however, are to get the current information. The assignment of attributes model allows for this additional information to be associated, without making every property a list of historical values.

This pattern is also used for context-specific assertions, such as when an object is given a label or description for the purposes of an exhibition or other event. This exhibition label does not replace the owning museum's title, but is useful for historical comparison and research purposes.

Assignment of Attributes

The AttributeAssignment class is an Activity, carried out by curators or researchers, rather than by artists. It is then classified_as an appropriate sort of activity for what is being assigned; assigning the artist to the Production event of an object would be attribution or aat:300056109, for example. The general activity properties of carried_out_by, timespan and took_place_at are available for when and where the assignment happened, and who made it. The timespan is the moment when the assignment took place, rather than the length of time that the assignment was held to be true by some audience.

The value of the assignment is given using assigned, and it must be a resource rather than a string or number. Thus an AttributeAssignment can assign an Actor to a Production, or a Name to an Actor, but not a value to a Name. The resource that the value is being associated with is given using assigned_to.

The example below demonstrates associating a previous title with an object.

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json", 
  "id": "https://linked.art/example/activity/5", 
  "type": "AttributeAssignment", 
  "classified_as": ["aat:300411672"], 
  "timespan": {
    "id": "https://linked.art/example/time/6", 
    "type": "TimeSpan", 
    "begin_of_the_begin": "1804-05-19", 
    "end_of_the_end": "1804-05-19"
  }, 
  "assigned": {
    "id": "https://linked.art/example/name/9", 
    "type": "Name", 
    "value": "Previous Painting Title"
  }, 
  "assigned_to": {
    "id": "https://linked.art/example/object/12", 
    "type": "ManMadeObject", 
    "label": "Current Painting Title", 
    "classified_as": ["aat:300033618","aat:300133025"]
  }, 
  "carried_out_by": [
    {
      "id": "https://linked.art/example/person/14", 
      "type": "Person", 
      "label": "Painting Curator"
    }
  ]
}

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"Style Of" Attribution

There is a common special case of wanting to assign not an individual (e.g. Rembrandt) or a group with specific identity (Workshop of Rembrandt) to the production of an object, but simply to say that it was produced as if it had been produced by some other actor. This is traditionally recorded as being "in the style of" a known artist. It is not correct to say that Rembrandt carried out the production, but a search for objects attributed (loosely speaking) to Rembrandt should discover this object. The assessment of "style of" attribution is a judgement decision that might be changed later as new evidence of the actual creator comes to light.

The approach taken for this case is to use an AttributeAssignment classified not as attribution, but instead as "style of" (aat:300404285). This prevent systems from mistakenly infering that the actor carried out the production, but is consistent with the overall pattern. There is intentionally no further model for this use case that the AttributeAssignment could be translated into.

This would also apply to cases where there is a "workshop of", "studio of", "circle of" and similar attributions in which there is doubt that there really was such a group, and thus there is reluctance to give that hypothetical group an identity. Instead of using the "style of" aat concept, it would use "workshop of" (aat:300404274), or other attribution qualifiers from AAT.

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json", 
  "id": "https://linked.art/example/activity/6", 
  "type": "AttributeAssignment", 
  "assigned": {
    "id": "https://linked.art/example/person/15", 
    "type": "Person", 
    "label": "Well Known Artist"
  }, 
  "classified_as": ["aat:300404285"], 
  "assigned_to": {
    "id": "https://linked.art/example/object/13", 
    "type": "ManMadeObject", 
    "label": "Example Painting", 
    "classified_as": ["aat:300033618","aat:300133025"]
  }, 
  "carried_out_by": [
    {
      "id": "https://linked.art/example/person/16", 
      "type": "Person", 
      "label": "Painting Curator"
    }
  ]
}

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AAT to CIDOC-CRM Mapping

A table summarizing the known AAT activity classifications and the appropriate predicate and class of resource that would be assigned by that activity. As further use cases are discovered, this table will be extended as needed.