Art Provenance Research

ArtNet price database contains fine arts auction records from international and national auction sales. The database is updated daily with records from 1989 to the present. To access the Price Database, click "log in" in top right corner. You do not need to create an account for NYU access. Artnet is not accessible through the NYU VPN.

SCIPIO records describe art auction and rare book catalogs for sales from the late sixteenth century to scheduled auctions not yet held. Records include the dates and places of sales, the auction houses, sellers, institutional holdings, and titles of works.

The Getty Research Portal™ is a free online search platform providing worldwide access to an extensive collection of digitized art history texts from a range of institutions, including auction catalogues.

Available through the Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Art & Architecture Collection (Room 300), New York Public Library. AskART is a database of auction records dating back to 1987 for hundreds of thousands of artists. It includes brief artist biographies, artwork images, artist signatures, and auction lot records with sales prices, estimated prices, and attributes of the work, along with any provenance notes, exhibitions, literature, and other lot notes that might be available.

Available through the Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This database provides information on the art market and auctions, with an extensive array of data on auction prices, indices, and images of art works from 1962 to the present, aggregated from several thousand auction houses internationally. Artprice regularly publishes articles on the art market issued by its press agency, Art Market Insight, and is a marketplace for the buying and selling of works of art.

Available through the Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Art & Architecture Collection (Room 300), New York Public Library. Invaluable, formerly called ArtFact, indexes the contents of auction sale catalogs of art, antiques, and collectible auction houses internationally. Coverage is from 1986 to present and includes both Decorative Arts (antiques and collectibles) and Fine Arts. Some entries include images.

Available through the Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Art & Architecture Collection (Room 300), New York Public Library. The Art Sales Catalogues Online database presents the online edition of the Répetoire des Catalogues de Ventes Publiques by Frits Lugt, as well as access to many digitized catalogs that are referred to by Lugt. In four volumes covering the period from 1600 to 1925, Lugt's Répertoire lists more than 100,000 art sales catalogues from libraries in Europe and the USA. This database provides access to Volumes 1 to 3 (1600-1900).