At the Harvard Art Museum we have the following Constituents:
         Unidentified Artist
         Unknown Artist
         Anonymous Ferrara 1560
         Anonymous Poitou 1699
         etc.

The first two are for the many cases where we don't know who the 
artist/maker was. We offer the two versions because some curators 
prefer one and some prefer the other. Our reports understand both. 
Object Culture has to be entered for every record - and in the 
Constituent record if possible.

The many "Anonymous" were created by the Prints department, and 
indicate specific artists whose hand is recognizable, but whose name 
we do not know.

Gillian McMullen
Collections Information Specialist
Harvard Art Museum

At 06:25 PM 4/20/2009, you wrote:
>Dear TMS list-serv,
>
>I'm hoping we can pick up on this old topic again to help me make a decision
>on how which field(s) to use for our decorative arts/sculpture "unknown"
>constituents. We wouldn't normally display "unknown" for dec arts-but
>rather "Costal New England, probably Salem, Massachusetts, or Portsmouth,
>New Hampshire" for example. Does anyone else list a place instead of
>an "unknown" constituent like this?
>
>The problem is-that most of them are more than 48 charaters
>(prefix/suffix/culture) and most of them have qualifiers
>like "possibly", "probably", "or", etc.-so they don't work in the 
>geography fields
>either. I'm also afraid it will get too "out of sight/out of mind" 
>in text entries or
>a udf.
>
>Do any of you have constituents that refer to a place-or has anyone come up
>with a good solution to listings such as the above?
>
>Many thanks for any advice!!
>
>Stephanie Hansen
>Milwaukee Art Museum