Modelling creative influence between artists and their works with OWL and CIDOC CRM

Abstract

In this paper we present an ontology for modelling creative influence between artists as documented as part of an international art exhibition on Dutch Golden Age genre painters titled Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry. The model, which describes influences on an artwork-to-artwork level, was developed in close cooperation with the curatorial advisory board of the exhibition and has guided the data gathering efforts in preparation for the exhibition. Our ontology extends the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) and has been influenced in its design by the CRM. It was implemented using the Erlangen CRM implementation and populated with an RDF graph containing over 900 instances of individual connections between works of art, referencing external Linked Open Data from Getty ULAN. The focus of this paper is on technical questions of knowledge modelling and implementation. The wider project context, the genesis of the domain expert conceptualizations and use cases for the ontology and RDF data are presented elsewhere in greater detail.