[Data-modeling] More fun with the visual art domain

[Jeff Prucher]

In response to a request on the visual arts discussion boards
(http://www.freebase.com/view/discuss/visual_art/artwork#/guid/9202a8c040006
41f80000000072fa4ba), I've made some proposed changes to the artwork model,
which I'd like to hear feedback on.

There are three changes:
1) insertion of a CVT between artwork and location, to track when a piece
has been where, and how long (insert standard discussion about time-series
data here)

2) insertion of a CVT between artwork and owner. This includes not only
dates, but the method it was acquired (e.g., purchase, gift, bequest), and
the purchase price

3) the addition of an "editions" property on artwork (and the reverse
property, "edition of", as well). The idea here is to allow Freebase to
display information about editions of a specific artwork (such as casts of a
sculpture, or prints of a photograph), which may have not only different
locations and owners, but also dimensions, media, and dates of creation. I
decided to model edition simply as "artwork" rather than "artwork edition"
because of the desire for museums and other art owners to have only one
property describing their holdings; an "artwork edition" type would have
required two properties -- "artwork owned" and "artwork editions owned"
which seemed unnecessarily clumsy. This does mean that the abstract version
of the artwork and the individual edition will have a number of redundant
properties, but my hope is that these can just be left blank. Naming of
editions will be interesting, but that's an issue every time we model them.

I've entered some casts of "The Thinker" (in bronze and plaster) on sandbox
for your perusal. (I put the proposed types in a private domain, so all
versions of The Thinker have both the original "artwork" type and a type
with only the proposed additions, "artwork (test)"; pretend, if you will,
that all the properties are one a single type. Let me know what you think. 

Domain:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/domain/user/jeff/visual_art
Examples:
http://sandbox.freebase.com/view/en/the_thinker

Jeff Prucher
Type Librarian & Ontologist
Metaweb Technologies, Inc.