An ontology for modelling the art exhibition domain
Digital Art History · Cultural Heritage · Semantic Web
OntoExhibit is a comprehensive ontology designed to accurately and extensively model the art exhibition domain.
It captures the complexity, multidimensionality, and richness of exhibitions as cultural phenomena, providing a semantic framework that enables:
- Structured representation of exhibitions
- Coherent linking of heterogeneous information
- Advanced semantic querying and knowledge discovery
OntoExhibit is implemented in OWL 2 (Web Ontology Language) and supports the adoption of FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) in cultural data management.
OntoExhibit consists of an OWL 2 ontology designed to facilitate the adoption of FAIR principles in managing information associated with the art exhibition domain. It aims to guarantee standardization, interoperability, reusability, and the extraction of new and strategic knowledge within this cultural sector.
The ontology addresses the needs of a wide range of stakeholders, including art historians, curators, cultural heritage professionals, galleries, and creative and cultural industries, by offering a structured and semantically rich representation of exhibitions as complex cultural ecosystems.
OntoExhibit is conceived as a comprehensive ontology designed to address the needs of multiple target scenarios:
- Art historians and researchers engaged in exhibition and curatorial studies
- Cultural heritage professionals documenting art exhibitions
- Museum and independent curators
- Gallery owners
- Creative and cultural industries (CCI) and tourism stakeholders
OntoExhibit originates from the conceptual model underlying Expofinder, a relational database developed within the Exhibitium project (Rodríguez-Ortega & Cruces-Rodríguez, 2019). While Expofinder followed a traditional relational approach to exhibitions—conceived as networks of relationships among actors and cultural objects—OntoExhibit extends and transforms this model through a refined semantic and conceptual framework.
This development was informed by extensive dialogue with researchers, curators, gallery owners, and art critics, allowing OntoExhibit to reinterpret the art exhibition domain as a complex cultural ecosystem composed of human and non-human actors intertwined through social, discursive, and symbolic practices.
OntoExhibit approaches exhibitions in their dual condition:
- As discursive, social, and cultural productions emerging from practices and interactions
- As active generators of discourse and public spheres, influencing future exhibitions and cultural meaning
OntoExhibit is aligned with reference ontologies, particularly:
- CIDOC-CRM (v7.2.1)
- FRBRoo (v3.0)
Selected classes and properties from these ontologies have informed OntoExhibit’s structure, while new classes and properties have been created to respond specifically to the requirements of the art exhibition domain.
OntoExhibit is not a CIDOC-CRM specification, but rather an ontology that adopts and aligns with key entities where appropriate, while proposing a conceptual structure better suited to modelling exhibitions as complex cultural ecosystems.
- 🌐 Andalex Project: https://andalexproject.iarthislab.eu
- 🌐 Complexhibit: https://complexhibit.eu/es_es/
This research has been funded by:
-
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Spanish Government)
Grant: PID2021-125037NB-I00 -
Junta de Andalucía
Grants: PY20_00508, UMA20-FEDERJA-126
If you use OntoExhibit in academic publications, please cite it as follows.
Rodríguez Ortega, N.; Salvachúa, M. J.; Roldán, M. del M. (2024).
OntoExhibit: An ontology for modelling the art exhibition domain.
iArtHis_Lab. https://w3id.org/OntoExhibit
@misc{OntoExhibit2024,
author = {Rodríguez Ortega, Nuria and Salvachúa, Martín Jerónimo and Roldán, María del Mar},
title = {OntoExhibit: An ontology for modelling the art exhibition domain},
year = {2024},
publisher = {iArtHis\_Lab},
url = {https://w3id.org/OntoExhibit},
note = {OWL 2 ontology, version 1.1.0}
}For citation managers and GitHub integration, see the CITATION.cff file included in this repository.
A curated list of scholarly publications directly related to the OntoExhibit ontology is available in PUBLICATIONS.md.
This repository is maintained as a long-term reference resource and is linked to a persistent identifier.
Persistent identifier (w3id):
🔗 https://w3id.org/OntoExhibit
For questions regarding the ontology, maintenance, or long-term availability, please contact:
-
Nuria Rodríguez Ortega
📧 nro@uma.es -
María del Mar Roldán García
📧 mrgarcia@uma.es
🔗 https://github.com/mmroldan -
Martín Jerónimo Salvachúa
📧 martinjs@uma.es
🔗 https://github.com/MartinM10 -
María Luisa Díez Platas
📧 marialuisa.diez@unir.net
At least one of the listed contacts commits to maintaining this resource and its persistent identifier resolution over time.
This work is distributed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)
🔗 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
-
Rodríguez Ortega, Nuria & Cruces Rodríguez, Antonio (2019).
Development of Technological Ecosystems for Cultural Analysis: The Case of Expofinder System and Art Exhibitions.
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 34(2), 423–448.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqy018 -
Rodríguez-Ortega, Nuria (2024).
Contours of Knowledge: Epistemological Implications of Semantic Models in the Representation of the Art Exhibition Domain through the Lens of the OntoExhibit Ontology.
Život umjetnosti, vol. 114, no. 1, pp. 122–147.
ISSN: 0514-7794.
https://doi.org/10.31664/zu.2024.114.06
OntoExhibit — Semantic modelling for art exhibitions