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?

The author standing in front of one the sculptures she researched, Colonel Richard Owen. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.

A lot of public art falls into the sad category of things we know are there but forget to notice.  This is one of the reasons why Heritage Preservation embarked in 1989 on the ambitious Save Outdoor Sculpture! program to get volunteers involved in documenting public art in their communities. The hope was that documentation would be the first step in caring for the art in our public sphere.  It was in that same spirit that the WikiProject Public Art was created by Jenny Mikulay and Richard McCoy for the Fall 2009 Collections Care and Management course. To pilot the project, the class documented all of the public art on the IUPUI campus. (A student of theirs wrote about her experience here.)

This past fall, my classmates and I participated in the second incarnation of this project. We researched 42 sculptures in and around the State House. When we started our work, the good folks at the State House Tour Office had almost no information on many of the sculptures.  Some of the artworks had been outside anyone’s notice for so long that nobody knew their real names.

Indiana Celebration. Photo courtesy of Tad Fruits.

That’s not the case anymore. One of the class’s best successes was from Alex Carrier, who discovered that the statue long known as Ceres is actually called Indiana (pictured above) and was featured at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of complacency with our surroundings, and it’s something we’re all guilty of. But the thing about public art is that it’s usually there because it represents something about us. It tells the story of a community. Think about it. For me, when I travel to a new city, the first thing I want to do is get acquainted with it. I wander, trying to get a feel for the place. More often than not, the art in a city tells me everything I need to know. Knowing whether its statues of past political leaders, informal folk art, religious icons, or avant-garde murals gives me a sense of a place’s culture. It helps me understand why it is the way it is. After all, those people put it there for a reason, so it must say something about them.

What does the art at the State House say about us? Why do we have a statue of Oliver P. Morton guarding the building’s doors? Why is there a bust of Colonel Richard Owen, who oversaw a Civil War prison camp, flanking the rotunda? Why is there a sculpture of a giant metal tulip tree leaf across the street?  Knowing the answers to these questions might just help us have a better understanding of ourselves and the community we live in.

Being recognized by the Indiana Senate and House of Representatives was a tremendous honor that my classmates and I won’t soon forget. We hope that the work we did will provide a starting point for further research and documentation of the art collection at the State House. We encourage anyone to view the results of our project (or, better yet, add to them!) right here and use the resources we created to discover more about the art, its subjects, and the artists who created it.

The truly dedicated IMA blog reader will know that Richard has been interested in putting information about art in Wikipedia for some time, and will also remember that the IMA has been interested in doing the same: from participating in the project Wikipedia Loves Art, to Max having lunch with local Wikipedians, to a number of folks from the IMA participating in the Wikimedia-sponsored event at Museums and the Web this year.

So, as a way to maximize collaborations, and kick off the final project for Richard’s Collections Care and Management course, we’ve arranged to have two rock stars of the Wikipedia world come lecture at the IMA next Tuesday night at 6pm.  The lectures will be free and open to the public.

Liam Wyatt, of Sydney, Australia, and Adrianne Wadewitz, of Bloomington, Indiana will discuss the importance of collaboration between Wikipedia and museums, libraries, and universities.

Here’s a little background on our IUPUI project: Last year Richard co-taught my Collections Care and Management course with Jenny Mikulay as we pioneered an effort to document the public art on the campus of IUPUI.  From that class we developed Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA); you can read Richard and Jenny’s blog for more information.  The project has received a lot of positive attention, from within the Wikimedia Foundation and in academia. We’re most proud of this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Scholars Use Wikipedia to Save Public Art From the Dustbins of History.

This year our Collections Care and Management course is working with the resources developed though WSPA to document, research, and publish information about the public artworks in and around the Indiana Statehouse.

While this lecture will serve as the kick off for our project, it is also being developed in collaboration with Andrea Copeland, a professor in the IU School of Library and Information Science.  Andrea’s Public Library Management course has been writing two articles in Wikipedia as part of their class:
•    Public Library Advocacy
•    History of Public Library Advocacy

We are excited to bring together two speakers who have made a name for themselves by advocating for a stronger relationship between Wikipedia and the cultural sector:

Liam has worked closely with the Wikimedia Foundation to promote Wikipedia collaborations with Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAMs). Recently, he’s been traveling the globe to help museums and libraries collaborate effectively with Wikipedia, most notably as the first ever Wikipedian-in-Residence at the British Museum, a project that was highlighted by a recent article in the New York Times.

Adrianne is a Wikipedia Campus Ambassador at Indiana University, Bloomington who is currently writing her dissertation on 18th-century children’s literature. She holds the distinction of contributing to over 30 Featured Articles, making her an authority on creating high quality Wikipedia articles. For years, Adrianne has used Wikipedia in her teaching and is an advocate for its use in academia.

Please note that following Liam and Adrianne’s talks there will be a workshop for using Wikipedia. Space is very limited! If you’re currently working in Wikipedia or interested in participating in the workshop, please email Lori Phillips at lorphill@iupui.edu.

Wikipedia & the Cultural Sector
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
6:00–8:45 pm
DeBoest Lecture Hall

6–7:30 pm Lectures
7:45–8:45 pm Workshop

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.

And here are two Gowalla trips we’ve made for Indianapolis:

IUPUI Public Art Collection Highlights Tour.

Top 10 Public Artworks in Indianapolis.

Gowalla is an iPhone-based app that has a lot of potential for helping to geo-locate and photo document public artworks. Look, for example, at the number of people that have checked in and taken a photograph at the Texas Rangers Monument in Austin.

These tools have helped us locate, document, and share information about hundreds of public artworks in just a few weeks. With this information we will continue making Wikipedia articles about public art in Indianapolis. As mobile technology spreads (particularly GPS-based technologies), opportunities to care for public art will also grow.

Wikipedia Saves Public Art. Logo designed in 2009 by Michael Mikulay.

With all of this in mind, we’re excited about travelling to Denver next Tuesday to participate in the one-day workshop, Wikimedia@MW2010. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to discuss how WSPA is an effective tool for documenting collections of public art that are not well known beyond their distinct local context. Also in Denver, we’ll be joining Rob Stein to listen to Max Anderson and Samuel J. Klein (Wikimedia Board of Directors) give the keynote presentations and then work through important issues and ideas raised by other participants. Our experiences with WSPA have given us a few ideas for the cultural sector that we’d like to share in advance of Wikimedia@MW2010:

* In the spirit of the Encyclopédie and in particular the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information about the materials, tools, and techniques artists have used and are currently using in their practices. Likewise, Wikipedia can become the central hub of information for the materials, tools, and techniques art conservators use in their work. An ideal article about a public artwork would include a material and technical description that was linked to corresponding and accurate information within Wikipedia.

* Public art today is often made using “current technology,” which presents an entire new set of issues. For example, Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Chicago is comprised of thousands of LEDs. Many technologies used in art quickly become outdated or difficult to update after a few short years. What if we could develop a similar “Conservation Status” for technologies like what exists for endangered animal species like the Bengal Tiger?

* Cultural institutions and public repositories should be encouraged to share their out-of-copyright images of art and put them in Wikimedia Commons.

* Finally, wouldn’t it be cool if the article about Art21 and all of its seasons was as thoroughly detailed and researched as iCarly’s?

What WSPA really needs, though, is for more people to make articles about public art in Wikipedia. Why not try it? If you need some inspiration, check out the “Template”, “Showcase,”, and “Open tasks”. And be sure to use the “talk pages” to leave feedback, questions, or ideas so we can all work together to make the project better.

Everything we know about Wikipedia and the other digital tools discussed above, we’ve learned by using our computers to experiment and engage in dialogue with more experienced contributors. (Wikipedia even gives “newbies” a sandbox to play in!) If you care about cultural heritage, you’ll find many kindred spirits in Wikipedia. That’s why we’d like to see you on Wikipedia, where we can work together and maybe even enjoy some Wiki Love. In an effort to bring some of the energy from Wikimedia@MW2010 directly back to Indianapolis, we’ve invited Liam Wyatt (Vice President, Wikimedia Australia) to give a public lecture at the Herron School of Art and Design on April 19 at 1:30 p.m. in the Basile Auditorium.

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:

Our methodology for identifying and documenting these artworks was derived from the very successful Save Outdoor Sculpture! (SOS!) project that started in 1989 and was organized by Heritage Preservation: The National Institute of Conservation in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. A book published in 2005 by Indiana’s SOS! leader, Glory-June Greiff, was also an inspiration.

We set out to share our research and documentation using Wikipedia and Flickr. With that move, our academic project became a movement that we call Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA). The primary goal of this project is to protect and preserve public art.

Conducted largely in the Internet cloud, WSPA has earned the attention of many other museum professionals and some very particular Wikipedians. By contextualizing our academic exercise in the Wikipedia universe and utilizing existing social networks, our project has rippled out through IUPUI and into the larger debate about how public art is cared for and managed. Our scholarly research efforts will become an active part of institutional memory rather than just being papers graded and forgotten. By publicly conducting our research and publishing our articles in Wikipedia, we opened our academic exercise up to intense scrutiny by our peers and Wikipedians committed to protecting its policies and procedures.

With such a large public undertaking, we were grateful to have help. Herron School of Art and Design Dean Valerie Eickmeier,  Art Strategies consultant Mindy Taylor Ross and Smithsonian American Art Museum Head of New Media Nancy Proctor visited our class and helped place our efforts in a larger campus, city, and national context. We also had help from IUPUI University Archivist Brenda Burk, Indiana University Curator of Campus Art Sherry Rouse, and the staff at IUPUI’s Campus Center and Herron Galleries.

So many people were willing to work with us because Wikipedia Saves Public Art isn’t just a one-time class project. It has larger goals. We seek to demonstrate the ways in which Wikipedia can be used as a content management system (CMS) so that anyone in the world can follow the WSPA model to care for and protect public art.

Like every other CMS available commercially, the needs of our project did not exactly match the capacities of current technology. Wikipedia is a complex structure with hard rules banning original research and copyright infringement, and it is also a forum premised on negotiation and debate. Student run‐ins with Wikipedia editors intent on enforcing the laws of the system ran from polite reminders to harsh {{speedydeletion}} of hours of work. Condition reports and images intended to provide a factual record of the current state of the collection were deemed out-of-bounds within Wikipedia. However, we were able to upload and tag images of IUPUI artworks using Flickr, and these images are linked to our Wikipedia articles.

Also, I’m proud to report that three of our articles made it on to the Main Page of Wikipedia, under the “Did you know section …” (Zephyr, Untitled (Jazz Musicians), and Peirce Geodetic Monument.)

Now that I’m on the other side of having to create and manage 40‐plus Wikipedia articles, 375 images on Flickr, 1 Facebook page and countless Twitter micro‐blogs specific to this project, I am invested in the longevity of the WSPA project and will continue to participate and follow the work of my peers.

A memorable moment of the project was when a WSPA article about a contemporary artwork in the form of a bucket of rocks suspended from a tree near the Herron School of Art and Design spurred the classic question “Is it art?”.  My professors and peers engaged in the debate across social network platforms including Wikipedia talk pages and Twitter.

Even though many of our articles went through dramatic revisions, the great majority of the critical information that we collected in our research (who made the art, where it is located, what it is made of and who is responsible for its care) did make it onto the most recognized encyclopedia in the online universe. At last check, even our previously deleted article came back to life (just try Googling “IUPUI Bucket of Rocks”). Now that makes me chuckle, and then I send links to my followers and friends to make them chuckle.
Finally, we’d like to make a call for help.  After much research, one of the artworks on campus still lacks fundamental information and verifiable sources.  Do you or does someone you know anything about Carey Chapmen’s artwork  on IUPUI’s campus?  Please let me know here on this blog, or go and fix it yourself within Wikipedia.  For now, it’s titled “Unknown (Tall Metal)“.

Unknown (Tall Metal) by Carey Chapman Photo by Chrissy Gregg

CoOL logo

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.

Stanford University Libraries also announced that they were laying off 32 employees.  Clearly, these decisions were difficult for Stanford.  As an employee of an institution that has recently experienced lay offs, I know that these are not easy times for anyone.

Also yesterday, the American Institute for Conservation (AIC) and the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) sent out e-mails pledging their determination to help support CoOL and to find a way to support the information contained within the web page.  Clearly, this will take a lot of work and effort.

Walter Henry, who had been for the past 22 years the principal organizer and manager of CoOL and the ConsDistList, suggested that CoOL “contains, at a very rough guess, 120,000 documents, possibly quite a few more. I hope they have been useful to you all, and I hope to be of service to you as we move into the future.”  That’s a truck load of documents that are now hanging perilously on the edge of invisibility.

The imminent demise of CoOL and the ConsDistList marks the biggest shift in information sharing for conservators since the profession started printing journals.

I don’t think for a minute that AIC and IIC and conservators in general are willing to let this resource and the contained documents fade away.

But I would like to raise some questions around the best ways for this information and data to be shared and stored.  I would like to suggest that AIC and IIC work to make themselves platforms for the creation and sharing of this information rather than just static distribution sources.  Instead of relying on one person to manage the information (Walter, how did you do it?), I suggest that they rely on **everyone** to manage, create, and update the information.

For the past few years my friend Daniel Cull and I have been involved in creating and editing the Wikipedia article for Art Conservation-Restoration.  While clearly, this article currently contains a fraction of the information that is in CoOL, Wikipedia’s potential is limited only be our efforts and imagination.  It should contain the sum of conservation knowledge.

Could Wikipedia become a replacement for CoOL?  Maybe, just maybe.

But that’s just part of the problem.  What about the ConsDistList, and all of the other e-mail dist lists associated within CoOL?  I can only throw out suggestions or ideas.   But maybe we could build discussion networks within current social media applications such as Facebook, Ning, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc?  What role could a blog or multiple blogs play in sharing this information?  Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to use these new and existing technologies?

I don’t really have the answers to these questions, but I think this is an opportunity for conservators to open their collaborative networks and try and use social media applications to handle our information sharing.  This is an opportunity for conservators and associated museum professionals to discuss the best ways to share and distribute electronic information.

But it’s not only individuals using these sites. Here at the IMA, as most of you know, we embrace social media as a useful tool in reaching our audiences and fulfilling our mission. And we’re not the only ones – LACMA, SFMoMa, and Walker Art Center are just a couple of our peers actively engaging online audiences. Even the Art Institution of Chicago recently announced here, that they’ll soon be launching a Twitter account.

But as museums and museum employees continue to grow their online activity – both personal and institutional – we’re faced with the challenge of exploring policies and guidelines online activity. Should there be employee policies in place for personal use of such sites? Should museums implement a clearly detailed policy for institutional use of such sites? And if so, what would either one of these policies look like and what purposes would they serve?

In researching the topic, I can tell you for sure that there are several people asking these questions, and I can also tell you that nobody really seems to know the answers.

So what are some of the issues to think about? Well, there are a lot of them. Museum 3.0 suggests the following issues are all important in considering your strategy to online networking: technical concerns, how to archive online museum activity, implementation planning, policy development, training, and a how/why to guide for media sites.

Museum 2.0 blogger Nina Simon discusses what might be included in a social media handbook. Her list includes things like rules on what should or should not be shared, how get a new initiative approved by your manager, what is considered appropriate for internal and external distribution, and a reference guide to social sites that would include recommendations, stylesheets, etc.

While I think these are all important items to consider, I can’t help but wonder if some topics should just be covered in ongoing discussions instead of binding them into a manual. Why? Well, by the time a policy or manual was organized, there’s a pretty good chance that the certain components (like a ‘how to guide’) would already be obsolete. In other words, the web changes so much that consistent updating might become a daunting task.

Three seemingly stagnant issues that I see as most important in policy making or strategic planning for social media include: information release, content quality & content control.

Information Release – A problem might arise here when someone inadvertently releases sensitive information about the museum. An example of this might be tweeting in excitement that a new acquisition has just arrived to the dock (which might jeopardize the safety of the work), or announcing an event on your facebook page before it’s been announced by your museum. This issue is one that might arise more frequently when an organization’s employee is using a personal account that wouldn’t be filtered by a colleague. The question to be asked here is: should museums tell their employees what they can and can’t discuss on their personal sites?

The release of certain information can also be a problem even on an institutionally controlled site. For example: Let’s say Daniel, our New Media Director, comes back from Spain next week and blogs about something regarding an artist in an upcoming exhibition that he interviewed. Let’s also say that the curatorial department was waiting to release that information for whatever reason – we might have ourselves one unhappy curator, or even worse, maybe an unhappy artist. (With effective communication amongst departments, this issue should not be as difficult to manage as the issue of personal Facebook, blog or Twitter accounts).

Content Control – With so many departments/individuals managing various sites and social network accounts for the institution, who’s the gatekeeper of information? For example, if multiple writers are contributing to a blog (as is the case here at the IMA) how do you filter or should you filter content? Is there someone that gets final say on what goes up where?

Content Quality – Because it’s so easy to post things on the internet and incredibly cost efficient how does an institution refrain from overloading their audiences? Even worse, how do we keep from putting up information (that might not be very good or insightful) just because we can? Here is a short post by Matt Yglesias that suggests that while non profits are increasingly enjoying the captivity of online audiences, the quality of information on the web is a growing problem.

Like most everyone I have come across, I do not have answers to all of these questions nor do I have a suggested policy or manual. But I will leave you with some additional links that I have found useful in the discussion of social media and museums.

IMA’s Blog Guidelines – which is posted directly on our blog.

Powerhouse Museum’s 2007 Blog Policy

BBC’s social media policy – this is a good example of a fairly extensive policy.

Brooklyn Museum’s Shelley Bernstein discussed various ways to use social media sites in Where Do We Go From Here? at the 2008 Museums & the Web conference. I would be shocked if the topic of social media policies were not discussed at M&W 2009, which is here in Indy, next week.

And finally – On the lighter side, this article entitled The 14 Types of Twitter Personalities might help you pinpoint some possible problems or areas of concern for your workplace.

At this stage in my Internet life, I’m wise to April Fools’ Day on the web and haven’t truly been had in years. However, that’s not to say I don’t look forward to the one day every year when cornball webmasters and bloggers try to pull one over on unsuspecting visitors. Honestly, I love the cheap humor April 1st brings and thought it would be fun to share a few fool sightings from around the web.

My first foolish sighting of the day was Wikipedia’s homepage. Most mornings I’m greeted with a rather bland but necessary infusion of random trivia from the web’s main tome of knowledge. However, my eyes perked open and a smile came to my face when I saw that the main article today is for a museum called MOBA (Museum of Bad Art). Cool. The best thing about Wikipedia’s “prank” page is that all of the content is seemingly true. For example, Britain’s oldest man, Henry Allington, really does credit his longevity to “cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women—and a good sense of humour.” Latecomers can see the April 1st site here.

An overwhelming amount of unbelievable news is usually a good tip that the calendar reads April one. For example, Warner Bros. Acquires the Pirate Bay for the price of a whopping $13 billion is unbelievable. BMW releasing cars that have a magnetic tow feature is totally unbelievable. And although there are some times I wish Google would really create this feature, Gmail’s Autopilot is unfortunately just unbelievable April news.

Some other notable pranks around the web include…

YouTube’s foolish contribution to April orientation here.  Try it yourself by addin “&flip=1″to any YouTube video.

Pizza Hut is apparently getting into the portrait business. Check out their artsy prank here.

Funnyordie.com has been completely taken over by Reba.

LOST is cancelled.

If you were made a fool today or did some fooling of your own, I’d like to hear about it in the comments. And for those of you who think that you made it all the way to the end of my post without getting pranked, why don’t you check out the history behind the name “April.”

Wikipedia Loves Art

So here’s the scoop, directly from Wikipedia’s page: “Wikipedia Loves Art, the name being a play off Valentine’s Day, is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009. Although there are planned events at each location, you can go on your own at any time during the month.”

Straight from the horses mouth. All you need is -

• A good understanding of the official rules and listing of themes we/Wikipedia needs documented. You can find that list HERE.
• You’ll also need to sign-up, but that part is easy. It’s your chance to contribute something worthwile, show your photographic eye and experience our art galleries = warm and free.
• Transportation to the IMA, a digital camera, pencil/notepad and a Flickr account.

It’s also Indiana’s opportunity to help out Wikipedia with better art content, go head-to-head against some of the leading museums throughout the world and, perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, your opportunity to win an iPod touch, blog t-shirt and more.

Questions?  Feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at newmedia@imamuseum.org.  Let’s do this thing!

My first idea was to do simply what I described above. I searched around a bit for a Flickr app, but I haven’t found one written by the Flickr team and I don’t really want to give my information to yet another third party. It seems, however, that Flickr has a really nice mobile web interface. Paired with the ability to email photos to Flickr from the phone, I think I have all I need to take that route. However, in the meantime I found that uploading photos with the Facebook app is really easy. This, along with the fact that the iPhone camera can’t compete for image quality with my digital camera, has led me to decide that the iPhone will fit the bill for the sort of in-group photojournalism that my close friends would appreciate, as I capture photos of my pets (and theirs) and other humorous things while I’m out and about. Some might argue that this is a waste of digital resources, but hey… what’s life without a little whimsy?

My discovery of the Google Earth app’s integration with Wikipedia and Panoramio, however, rekindled my interest in contributing high quality geotagged content. Contributing content to these resources is something that could have been done before, but the iPhone (and other devices that utilize both GPS and wireless networks) provides a new level of exposure. Rather than needing to research a travel destination beforehand, it is now possible to whip out a device like this and find interesting features nearby, or learn more about your current surroundings.

I decided that it would be quickest to try out Panoramio. After signing up for an account, I uploaded a couple of my photographs (one of them taken here at the 100 Acres) and found the process to be very easy. I could really see myself getting addicted to uploading new images and waiting in great anticipation to see if they are deemed Google Earth worthy, at which point they should show up on my phone. There are also thematic contests that are very easy to enter, so I couldn’t resist adding my photos to those as well. We’ll see if people think they’re any good.

I might also try out Wikipedia. After signing up and reading the newbie documentation, I’m a little concerned about finding what they would call “notable” subjects (among other qualifications, things of more than just local interest). According to the guidelines, I can’t write about the IMA, so I’ll have to find other local gems… seems like a good challenge.

I believe that these new devices could open up an era of increased engagement with our surroundings. It will be interesting to see how these tools handle the increasing amount of geotagged information as more people contribute content. Hopefully the result will be high quality resources that educate and inspire the people who use them.

The Wikipedians, Max, and I.

Pictured from right to left are: Max, Aaron (aka The Urbanophile), Jasmine, Christina, and myself.  Not pictured here are Jenny and Joelle.  While I know that Jenny had a scheduling conflict that day, we never did get a response back from Joelle (where’d you go, Joelle?).

Here’s a list of the articles they created:

Christina’s Sutphin Fountain

Jasmine’s Numbers

Aaron’s Mega-Gem

Joelle’s LOVE

Jenny’s SnowPlow

I’ve been watching these articles since they were created and noticed each one has been added to by other Wikipedians – even if just a little.  The article on Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture has really taken off.  It’s started to grow into an article about all of Indiana’s LOVE sculptures, not just the one at the IMA, which of course was the first sculptural version that he made.  Wouldn’t it be cool if it became the place for information about that sculpture!

Though I don’t think I’ll be offering lunch with Max anytime soon for making more articles, I do encourage you to make an article about an artwork in the IMA’s collection.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a believer in Wikipedia, but I think it’s important work.  It could be a student project either at the college or high school level – really, anyone can make an article once you get the hang of it.

Because I’m interested in exploring and developing the idea that Wikipedia articles can serve as a place to document public artworks by hosting images, referencing other published information, and allowing the public to have first-hand involvement in the history and preservation of public art, I started working a while ago with a two other conservators Crista and Daniel to make Wikipedia articles about a few public artworks.

Here’s a list of the articles that we created:
In Indianapolis:
Ann Dancing

Depew Memorial Fountain

In Wabash, IN
The Lincoln Monument of Wabash, Indiana

In Washington, D.C.
Always Becoming

While we found that hosting images can be a little tricky (clearing copyright, etc) there’s clearly a lot that can be achieved through this work.  Take for example the Ann Dancing sculpture here in Indy by Julian Opie.  While it was installed in January of this year, it had some display issues and was recently taken down for repairs.  How do I know this?  I found out when someone made an edit to the article.  In a matter of days an image was uploaded and links were made to the local newspaper coverage.

I had never been so interested to see an artwork not working.  It was an example of history being written almost as it happened!

Who knows what will come of all of this but I believe there’s great potential for Wikipedia to help raise awareness about the preservation of artworks through documentation and keeping an up-to-date history – something that print publications simply can’t do.