How an Artist Archive Corrects a Work’s Date

For a buyer, a single year beside an artwork can seem as fixed as its dimensions. The year may instead have passed through a chain of labels, exhibition checklists, gallery files and catalogues. If an early record was mistaken, later records may repeat the error. The question is not simply whether a date appears in print, but where that date came from.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum’s guide to Access O’Keeffe gives an unusually clear account of this process. Its online artwork records begin with the 1999 catalogue raisonné and identify reviewed changes rather than silently replacing the earlier information. The guide explains that records maintained with O’Keeffe and her associates were copied from one system to another. That work preserved a great deal, but it also carried forward occasional transcription and identification errors.

O’Keeffe’s own inscriptions on the backs of works and their supports became important evidence. Some had been hidden by backings when an earlier inventory was made. The museum’s account also describes dated inscriptions by Alfred Stieglitz on the stretchers of works included in a 1923 exhibition. Made close to the exhibition, these sometimes differed by several years from dates entered roughly two decades later. Comparing the physical marks with archival fact sheets and checklists allowed researchers to establish new dates for some works. The guide notes that such revisions seldom change a previously accepted date by more than two years.

Even a dated exhibition checklist has limits. A work shown in a particular year was not necessarily made the year before. O’Keeffe sometimes moved an unfinished painting between locations, or reworked one after it had been exhibited. A checklist establishes an exhibition event; it is one piece of evidence about creation, not an automatic creation date.

This is why an archive correction need not signal a scandal or a newly discovered work. It can be the ordinary result of bringing a physical inscription, a contemporary document and later catalogue records into the same view.

If a seller cites an artist archive or catalogue for a work’s date, request the exact entry or catalogue number and compare it with the offered object. Check the title, medium, dimensions, image and identifying marks. If the sale listing uses a different year from an older publication, ask for the archive’s explanation and the date on which its record was updated. Do not turn a year attached to a related work in a series into the date of this particular object.

The O’Keeffe Museum’s contributor guidance describes a continuing review process with institutions that hold her work. Contributors can mark information correct, incorrect or not documented and add updates as research changes. That model is useful beyond O’Keeffe: a good record shows what was checked, what changed and what remains uncertain. A buyer can then understand the date as a supported conclusion with a traceable basis, rather than a bare claim in a sales caption.