Provenance is the "record of ownership of movable works of art" according to the Dictionary of Art, which has an excellent overview and bibliography of the subject. The Art Library also has a substantial number of catalogues raisonnés for many artists.

The AAM guide to Provenance Research (Art Reference N3999 .Y45 2001) The "Bible" of provenance research, this work was prompted by the need for provenance research on works of art looted during the Holocaust. Covers basic provenance research, Holocaust-Era provenance research, and includes invaluable appendices on the history of collecting, collectors, dealers and auction sales, and more. Excellent bibliography, list of key art libraries and photographic archives, and more.

Journal of the History of Collections (1989-to date) This is one of the most important journals for the topic. Indexed by: Art Full Text and Bibliography of the History of Art as well as other indexes. Current and back issues are available online.

The Getty Provenance Index Database A crucial database for the study of art collecting practices of past centuries. The databases contain indexed transcriptions of auction catalogs and archival inventories of western European works of art, as well as nearly 1,000,000 records from the late 16th century to the early 20th century. The GPI is available free of charge via the Web.

Two new databases have been included in the most recent (1999) release: Public Collections and Provenance of Paintings. Public Collections contains cataloguing information on the individual paintings, executed by artists born before 1900, from a selection of American and British museums. The Provenance of Paintings database comprises information on the provenance of paintings from American and British collections found in the Public Collections database.

These new databases join inventories of notable seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Italian, Spanish, and Dutch collections, as well as the contents of British (1801-1820), Belgian (1801-1820), German (1690-1800), Dutch and French (1801-1810) painting auctions of the nineteenth century. From this series ("Documents for the History of Collecting"), the library holds: Collections of paintings in Madrid, 1601-1755 (Art Reference - ND456 .B79 1997 Art Ref), Collections of paintings in Naples, 1600-1780 (ND621.N2 L3 1992 Art Ref), Corpus of paintings sold in The Netherlands during the nineteenth century (ND47.C67 1998 Art Ref), Répertoire des tableaux vendus en France au XIXe siécle, and The Index of Paintings Sold in the British Isles During the Nineteenth Century (Art Reference - ND47 .I5 1988).

UNC Libraries' online catalog can be searched by author, title, subject, keyword, and call number. Here are a few examples:

Author search: Nancy H. Yeide

Title search: AAM guide to provenance research

Subject search: Art Collectors and collecting

Keyword search: antiquities theft

Worldcat To see what books and other materials libraries around the country own related to Provenance Research, search the Worldcat database. Request materials not owned by UNC Libraries via Interlibrary Services.