Ivy - my first suggestion is to leave the title field blank if you
have no title. If blank won't work for you, you must be incredibly
consistent with your designation for such items. Set a convention
from which you do not stray. I suggest you use something in lower
case letters surrounded by parenthesis like

(unknown) or
(no title) or
(none) ... you get the picture. Putting anything at all in a title
field implies a title and, yes, some artists do "title" their works
"Untitled", "Untitled 2", etc.

> We are working on a new computerized catalog and have hit a new hitch. I am
> including a layout which will take some of the fields from the "catalog
> card" and use them to produce labels for the objects, which will look
> something like this:
>         Title (or name of object)
>         Provenance and date
>         Acc. #
>         Donor & Date of donation
>
> The problem comes with paintings and prints for which we have little
> information and no formal title. Do we say "Untitled" or is that in itself
> a kind of title within the art community? Do we say "Title Unknown"? Six or
> eight of those in a row could get pretty funny. Do we say "Watercolor",
> etc.? Any suggestions here?
> Ivy Fleck Strickler                     Phone 215-895-1637
> Drexel University                       Fax 215-895-4917
> Nesbitt College of Design Arts          [log in to unmask]
> Philadelphia, PA 19104
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Karen W. Anderson, Registrar  <[log in to unmask]>
Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
Canyon, Texas
Phone: 806-656-2966; Fax: 806-656-2250
Everything I say is IMHO, as I know nothing for certain.
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