Mapping Paintings: Open-Source Platform Tracks Artworks' Journeys

A team at Boston University, led by professor Jodi Cranston, has launched Mapping Paintings, an open-source platform that visualizes the provenance and travel history of artworks on an interactive map. Funded by the Kress Foundation, the website allows users to consult existing maps and create new ones, sharing research globally. The tool displays all movements of an artwork in a single image, enabling comparisons between works by the same artist or tracing an artwork's path to a museum. For each painting, details include owners, sales, inheritances, and known addresses. Cranston told Hyperallergic that visualizing provenance data helps users grasp the materiality of artworks and avoid getting bogged down in authenticity disputes. The project expands on Mapping Titian, a site dedicated to studying Titian's paintings from the 16th century onward, whose content has been migrated to the new platform.