# The Exhibition Record a Multiple Cannot Have > Fifty-six of the 220 published records in this archive carry an exhibition history. Every map, every photograph, every printed book and every ceramic carries none, and a much larger collection shows the same gradient. > The Study - 2026-09-01 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-exhibition-record-a-multiple-cannot-have/ ## Key points - Of the 220 published records in this archive, 56 carry an exhibition history of any length. Four whole object classes carry none at all: every one of the 12 maps, every one of the 12 photographs, every one of the 7 printed books and every one of the 7 ceramics. One of the 13 prints has a line. - The gap is not an artefact of our research. Sampling 250 records per classification from the Art Institute of Chicago's public collection API on 1 September 2026 returns an exhibition history on 73 per cent of paintings, 47 per cent of textiles, 35 per cent of sculpture, 20 per cent of photographs, 8 per cent of prints and 6 per cent of books. - The Art Institute holds three separate impressions of Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa, all in the Clarence Buckingham Collection, catalogued as 1925.3245, 1928.1086 and 1952.343. All three are given as 25.4 by 37.6 cm and all three carry an empty exhibition-history field. A show that borrowed the Great Wave from Chicago borrowed one of them, and the surviving record does not say which. - Where an object is unique the exhibition line separates things nothing else can. The Galleria Borghese lists four exhibitions against its first Bernini bust of Scipione Borghese and seven against the second, which tells the two apart far more sharply than the eight millimetres of height between them. - This matters because exhibition history is normally the cheapest identity evidence available: a loan puts a named object in a named city on a dated day. For a multiple that evidence does not exist, so the whole burden falls on provenance and on the physical sheet. ## The exhibition record attaches to unique objects and slides off multiples ## In this archive four whole object classes have no exhibition history at all ## A much larger collection shows the same gradient ## Three sheets, one measurement, and no way to say which was shown ## Where the object is unique the exhibition line carries weight nothing else does ## How to read a record whose exhibition history cannot exist ## Why this archive is free to read An empty exhibition field looks like a gap in the research and is usually a property of the object. The evidence that a loan generates attaches to things that can be asked for by name, and a design that exists in forty impressions across thirty collections cannot be asked for by name, so the record that would have identified the sheet was never made. Anyone doing diligence on a print, a photograph, a map or a printed book should assume from the start that the cheapest identity evidence in the field is unavailable and plan the work around the sheet itself: its marks, its margins, its paper and its accession number. And anyone cataloguing a multiple today can prevent the loss for the next reader by writing the accession number of the impression into the exhibition entry, which costs nothing at the time and is unrecoverable afterwards. ## Questions **What is an exhibition history in a museum record?** It is the list of exhibitions in which a particular object has been shown, normally giving the year, the venue and the title of the show. It is useful evidence because a loan places a specific object in a specific place on a dated day, which is why it is often used to support a provenance line. **Why do prints and photographs have so little exhibition history?** Because the record is generated by loan catalogues, and a catalogue entry for a print usually describes the design rather than the individual sheet. Museums also show works on paper in rotations from their own holdings, which produce no catalogue and no per-object entry at all. **Does a missing exhibition history mean the object was never displayed?** No. It means no exhibition entry has been published for that object. Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother has been on display somewhere almost continuously since 1936 and the record for the Library of Congress negative carries no exhibition line. **Can an exhibition history prove which impression of a print was shown?** Usually not. The Art Institute of Chicago holds three impressions of Hokusai's Under the Wave off Kanagawa, catalogued at the same dimensions, and its records carry no exhibition history for any of them, so a documented loan of the design cannot be attached to one sheet. **How thin is the exhibition record across a large collection?** Sampling 250 records per classification from the Art Institute of Chicago's public API on 1 September 2026 returned an exhibition history on 73 per cent of paintings and 8 per cent of prints, with books lowest at 6 per cent. ## Sources - [1] Art Institute of Chicago, public collection API, artworks search endpoint. Queried 1 September 2026 for the classification_title terms painting, textile, sculpture, photograph, print and book, sampling 250 records each across five pages, and counting non-empty exhibition_history fields. Also the source for the three impressions of Under the Wave off Kanagawa, accessions 1925.3245, 1928.1086 and 1952.343, all in the Clarence Buckingham Collection and all given as 25.4 by 37.6 cm with an empty exhibition_history. - [2] Art Institute of Chicago, object page for Under the Wave off Kanagawa, accession 1928.1086, Clarence Buckingham Collection. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection API record for The Antioch Chalice, object 468346, accession 50.4, The Cloisters Collection, 1950. Read 1 September 2026 for the medium, the overall dimensions of 19.6 by 18 by 15.2 cm and the gallery number. - [4] Galleria Borghese, online collection catalogue, entry for the Bust of Scipione Borghese, inventory CCLXV. Read 1 September 2026 for the height of 77.2 cm, the Carrara marble, Room 14 and the four listed exhibitions of 1930, 1998, 1999 and 2017 to 2018. - [5] Galleria Borghese, online collection catalogue, entry for the Bust of Scipione Borghese, inventory CCLXVI. Read 1 September 2026 for the height of 78 cm, Room 14 and the exhibition list including Paris 1935, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Gallery of Canada in 2008 and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in 2009.