Artwork Metadata, Explained

Metadata: What is it?

Metadata is all information about a work or artist/designer that serves to identify and classify. For artworks, this includes basic identifying information such as title, date, medium, editions information and dimensions as well as prices, signature, provenance, and additional information such as condition and framing. Apart from providing crucial information collectors need in order to decide to inquire, Artsy uses artwork metadata to allow collectors to browse and filter by medium, size, price point, and date site-wide.

Artsy is a global platform with users all over the world, and while there are many different ways to format metadata, we want to make sure that everyone adheres to the same standards.

Make the most of your inventory by providing complete and accurate information! Works with complete information (title, date, medium, dimensions, and editions information) receive more inquiries on average.

Why is it important?

Sales & Inquiries: If a work is missing two or more pieces of basic information, the likelihood it will be inquired on decreases by nearly 60% compared to the average inquiry rate. Overall, artworks and design works with complete metadata are inquired on 50% more frequently than artworks with any incomplete metadata, even just one missing item.

Collector Discovery and Recommendations: We use artwork and design work metadata to suggest new works to collectors in our personalized weekly emails, and to filter artworks on the Artworks page, and to allow collectors to filter by size, date (and more) site-wide.

Quality of Inquiries: Collectors need to know what they're inquiring about, and so providing complete and accurate information on the work's page increases the likelihood that the work is a good fit for the collector.