Rosemary Arnold is an IUPUI Museums Studies student who participated in Richard McCoy’s Collections Care and Management course last fall.
On Thursday of last week, my classmates and I from IUPUI’s Fall 2010 Collections Care and Management course, along with our instructor Richard, were honored by both the Indiana Senate and House of Representatives for the work we did in documenting the Indiana State House Public Art Collection. Senator Jim Merritt and Representative Tom Saunders sponsored Concurrent Resolutions to recognize our work.
Representative Saunders presents the House Concurrent Resolution to instructor Richard McCoy and students of the IUPUI Museums Studies Program. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.
Senator Merritt presents the Senate Concurrent Resolution to instructor Richard McCoy and students of the IUPUI Museums Studies Program. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.
While we were in the House of Representatives to receive our Resolution, Representative Saunders said something that struck me. He said, “I’ve walked past some of these statues for fourteen years, and I never knew the full story about why they were here.”
I think a lot of us have had a similar experience, and that idea got me thinking. How is it possible to walk by something every day and never really see it? Why are we content to know that something does exist, but not why it exists? Is there any way to stop ourselves from becoming so comfortable with our surroundings that we hardly notice them anymore?
Here’s a guest post by Lori Byrd Phillips, who is probably the busiest graduate student in the IUPUI Museum Studies Program. In addition to her coursework, she’s my teaching assistant for the Collections Care and Management course, developing the IMA’s E-Volunteer Program, interning as the in-house Wikipedian at The Children’s Museum, and a project leader for Wikipedia Saves Public Art.
Artworks that are displayed outdoors face different risks than those that are kept inside. The pigeon, for example, is a dangerous bird to bronze sculptures; the acids in guano can actually corrode a bronze patina in a fairly short time. Another risk public artworks face is that we simply stop caring. When we stop noticing the artworks that surround us, their significance and cultural context is lost.
(via Flickr user travelbex)
Enter Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA) which we created as part of our Fall IUPUI Museum Studies class (you might remember our student, Elizabeth Basile, blogged about her personal experience with the project back in December). The logic of this project is to put information about public artworks into Wikipedia so that people won’t forget or stop caring about them. Yes, there’s a lot of guano in Wikipedia, but with its millions of viewers a day and openness to participation, it’s a vital resource for the cultural sector.
Before we started WSPA, there were only a handful of articles in Wikipedia about public art in Indianapolis—not so good for a city that brags about having more monuments than any city other than Washington, DC. Through our efforts, there are now 57 articles (and more each week) about local public artworks on Wikipedia. Since we started WSPA, our articles have been viewed more than 66,000 times. Now we are thinking big about how WSPA can truly become a global project and how to get more people to make articles about public art in their own town.
Recently, we’ve had a lot of help from Lori Byrd Phillips (an IUPUI Museum Studies graduate student) and Sarah Stierch (a soon-to-be George Washington University Graduate student, who runs her own blog, Sarah – Your Favorite Museum Intern. Together, we’ve begun developing “The Process” to help Wikipedians and public art advocates translate information contained in public databases into Wikipedia articles. For example, did you know that volunteers working through Heritage Preservation’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! surveyed Indianapolis in 1992-1994 and found 205 sculptures? Information about all of them is available online through the Smithsonian’s public database.
Thanks to Magnus for making the application that allowed us to make this chart
But a lot has happened in Indy’s world of public art since the early 1990s. That’s why actually going out and visiting the artworks is important—to verify the information contained in the Smithsonian’s database, to make note of any changes, and to use the tools of 2010 to research and share information about those changes. In addition to finding artworks surveyed by the SOS! folks, you can research new artworks that have been installed across the city. We’re grateful to have our laptops, cell phones, and Web-based tools that have allowed us to create these cool things:
Here’s the Flickr map that we are using to plot the location of the more than 500 images we’ve taken of public art in Indianapolis. By mapping them in Flickr we also resolve their GPS coordinates.
Here’s the Google map that we’re using to plot the original 205 SOS! entries from the Smithsonian database. While the Flickr map is a lot easier to use, we are also experimenting with Google Maps because its satellite maps are so much better. Read the rest of this entry »
Here is a guest post by Elizabeth Basile, an IUPUI Museum Studies Graduate student:
Six months ago, if you had asked me if I would ever write a Wikipedia article, blog or “tweet,” I would have chuckled. Social networking is for self‐promotion and online dating. Now, here I am, a graduate student in IUPUI’s Museum Studies program writing this blog post for the IMA’s blog.
Zephyr by Steve Wooldridge; Photo by Lauren Tally
What changed my mind about creating content for the Web? This fall, I enrolled in two courses devoted to contemporary museum practice: Collections Care and Management (CC&M), co‐taught by IMA Objects & Variable Art Conservator Richard McCoy and IUPUI faculty member Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, and Museums and Technology, taught by IMA New Media Director Daniel Incandela. My first assignment for both classes was to create user accounts for Wikipedia, Twitter and Flickr, and then start using them.
In CC&M, our major project was to formalize the artworks on and around IUPUI’s campus into a real collection. In the end, we identified 40 pieces that we dubbed the “IUPUI Public Art Collection.” Didn’t know that much art existed on IUPUI’s campus? Take a walk around sometime to see an incredibly diverse representation of styles, media and condition qualities. You’ll also find four sculptures on loan from the IMA: East Gate/West Gate, Mega-Gem, Portrait of History, and Spaces with Iron. You might remember when East Gate/West Gate was moved to IUPUI early this year:
I remember the first time I saw the CoOL web page (Conservation Online). It was about 1995 and I was a student working in the Lilly Library’s Book Conservation department when Jim Canary told me to check it out.
I really can’t think of a topic that isn’t covered at CoOL. I can remember spending hours digging around all of the pages when I first saw it. It seemed to answer all of my questions about my interest in the profession and point to ones that I hadn’t thought of. Have a look at all of the “Conservation Topics,” or look at the number of national and international organizations who have their home pages associated with CoOL. Dig around there. It’s amazing.
Perhaps most importantly, though, look at the ConsDistList, an e-mail distribution list that at last count had just under 10,000 subscribers. This dist list has been going strong since 1988 and has been one of the most important ways for conservators to share and find information on a truly international level. It has been the central hub for information sharing within the conservation community.
Yesterday that changed when Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources announced that Stanford is no longer going to support CoOL and that the ConsDistList had produced its last instance. Bang. It’s over.
