Agents play a crucial role in provenance events, serving as essential components in documenting provenances. In this article you learn about the different agent roles and how to add them to provenance events.
Agents can be added to all art events, but they are especially important for the description of provenances. There are three dedicated roles through which agents can be linked to provenance events: source, receiver, and sub-agent. Using other agent roles is also possible, but only these three dedicated roles will be reflected in the auto-generated provenance statement.
Source
The Source agent describes the previous owner or custodian of the artwork. This can be a person as well as an institution. For example in the case of the transaction type by descent this would be the person who died while they had complete ownership of the artwork.
Receiver
The Receiver agent is the person or institution who becomes the new owner or custodian of the artwork. In our example of the transaction type by descent the artwork would be given to a family member of the previous owner (the Source) after the latter passed away. Thus this family member becomes the new owner and in our case the Receiver.
Sub-agent
The optional role Sub-agent is available to connect third-party facilitators to the transactions. A sub-agent could for example be a person who negotiated the transaction for their client (which would be linked as the receiver in the same event).
In cases where a source is also a previous owner, make sure that a separate, preceding provenance event naming them as a receiver has been entered. The repetition of the same agent as a receiver in one event and then as a source in the following provenance, creates a provenance chain that is reflected in the generated provenance statements. The separate event also allows you to describe the circumstances of how a source came into possession or became the owner of a work.
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Last updated: February 14, 2024