Dr Carlo Corsato

Dr Carlo Corsato is the former curator of the Digital Dossier Programme at the National Gallery, London, and the author of the Gallery’s Provenance Standard, which informs all new and future provenance records and supports the production of semi-structured, machine-readable collections data. He is a professional art historian with archival research experience and publications in provenance, and collaborations with Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Dorotheum.

Dr Carlo Corsato will be speaking at the Digital Collections Summit 2026 :

Flag the Gap, Don’t Fill It: A Working Method for Collections Data

How do you put AI to work on collections records you can’t afford to get wrong? I’ll share a National Gallery pilot tested on 1933–1945 provenance (the most unforgiving material in the collection) and demonstrate a working method built on two principles: AI that flags what it doesn’t know, and output that reads as English prose and parses as data. The method serves registrars, exhibition teams, curators and researchers querying the same record from their own professional perspectives. You’ll leave with a method, a diagnostic, and the vocabulary to specify what your records actually demand of any AI model.