ArtThing

I want LibraryThing for the art in our home. An image of each piece, provenance, artist info, maybe some notes about what in particular I find striking or unusual. The urge to catalog is deep, but the will is rather lacking. I keep some notes scattered around, a folder of artist bios mixed in with gallery information, museum brochures, and fun postcards (my “art” folder), occasional receipts. Not exactly the 5 million pages of organized notes that Thomas Edison left behind.

The way to build ArtThing would be to position it first and foremost as a way for artists to keep their own catalog of what they create. It would be useful for archival purposes and for marketing, especially for artists who do not yet have their own web site. You could look through all of an artist’s pieces, and see which ones are for sale. You could import listings into your own catalog as a collector, and even maintain private or public wishlists. There’d be nice interfaces to existing art sales sites like Etsy, and eventually ArtThing could be its own thriving secondary market for reselling or trading pieces.

The obvious difference from books — the lack of an ISBN for an art piece — would be handled by the ArtThing unique ID number (ATid) assignment system. That ATid number would be handy for insurance lists and estate planning, and would be easy to put on the price tag or even include on the back of a print. If a signature in the corner of a nice pastoral oil painting adds value, surely an ATid number in the corner would add even more.