ScrollTimes: Tracing the Provenance of Paintings as a Window into History
This work addresses the problem of comprehensive provenance analysis for art historians, offering an interactive tool to trace ownership and historical context, but it is incremental as it builds on existing technology in cultural artifact study.
The researchers tackled the challenge of analyzing the provenance of traditional Chinese handscroll paintings by developing a three-tiered methodology and the ScrollTimes visual analysis system, which integrates image processing and language models to extract and validate elements from cultural heritage databases, validated through case studies and expert interviews.
The study of cultural artifact provenance, tracing ownership and preservation, holds significant importance in archaeology and art history. Modern technology has advanced this field, yet challenges persist, including recognizing evidence from diverse sources, integrating sociocultural context, and enhancing interactive automation for comprehensive provenance analysis. In collaboration with art historians, we examined the handscroll, a traditional Chinese painting form that provides a rich source of historical data and a unique opportunity to explore history through cultural artifacts. We present a three-tiered methodology encompassing artifact, contextual, and provenance levels, designed to create a "Biography" for handscroll. Our approach incorporates the application of image processing techniques and language models to extract, validate, and augment elements within handscroll using various cultural heritage databases. To facilitate efficient analysis of non-contiguous extracted elements, we have developed a distinctive layout. Additionally, we introduce ScrollTimes, a visual analysis system tailored to support the three-tiered analysis of handscroll, allowing art historians to interactively create biographies tailored to their interests. Validated through case studies and expert interviews, our approach offers a window into history, fostering a holistic understanding of handscroll provenance and historical significance.