New Dimensions for Collections at WCMA

Last month I started work on an exciting new project, with a goal of integrating experience data into collections information; let’s release some collection data.

As part of WALLS, Williams students camp out for the opportunity to select a work of art from the collection to hang in their dorm room. Photo by Kate Drew Miller. (Zhu Wei, New Pictures of the Strikingly Bizarre #9, 2004)

The Williams College Museum of Art is working to incorporate how collection objects are used into their collection data and leverage that richer collection information to encourage deeper engagement. Thanks to the Mellon Foundation, we’ll make that happen.

It’s a project that will touch nearly every part of the museum (and many parts of the college). It will require a digital mindset across the organization. We’ll need to rethink infrastructure and reimagine how the collection circulates digitally, through the online collection and social media. It may very well be transformative for WCMA, and help other museums as well.

Some important background: WCMA uses its collection in amazing ways. It’s an academic museum, and the collection is meant to be a key part of learning across disciplines. In Object Lab, faculty select works of art that become lenses for classes to explore neuroscience, or botany, or religion. Collection objects are loaned to students through WALLS, encouraging long-term personal connections. The Rose Object Classroom allows artworks to be used in a classroom space. WCMA’s Reading Room encourages timely public conversation around individual works of art.

This work of art from the collection is one of several currently being used as part of neuroscience class in Object Lab. That’s interesting. That fact will help science faculty select works of art next year. That fact also connects this print to the other, very different artworks selected for the class. Students will make their own observations about it. It will circulate on Instagram, and Medium, and… [Anni Albers, Fox I (detail), 1972)

Also important:

• Collection information: WCMA’s registrars have nurtured the collection data here since it was handwritten on ledgers and index cards.
• Spreadsheets: There is already data on academic and public use of the collection in spreadsheets. Beautiful, handmade spreadsheets going back several years.
• Nimbleness: This small staff can make ideas happen quickly.
• Culture: Art history and museums are in the (Berkshire mountain) air. They’re both pursued with seriousness. The Clark and MASS MoCA are practically next door, and Williams punches way above its weight class in inspiring and influencing the museum world.
• Leadership: The Director and senior staff see this as central to the museum’s mission and strategy

At the end of the semester, students participating in WALLS return their collection loans to the museum. They’re encouraged to add an entry to a journal that stays with the collection object through the years.

WCMA is unique, but the idea for this project is important for all museums. Museums need to preserve objects AND the stories behind them — including not just historical context, but how the objects are used in exhibitions and curricula, how they connect with people, and how they circulate online. (This is something I’ve been keen on for awhile. Also check out David Newbury’s Ignite talk, and his extended riff in a podcast on infrastructure.)

Ah, TMS.

As we move ahead we’ll strive to make progress (and mistakes) in ways that other museums — especially small ones — can learn from. That means we’ll be doing things like prodding the front-end of TMS to get data out, exploring off-the-shelf cloud-based tools, and striving to be open in our processes.

Instead of a giant launch at the end, we’ll be learning as we go, releasing modular parts and tools, and empowering partners. The sum of those parts and partnerships will be substantial, sustainable and transformative. That’s the goal.

First Steps

In my first weeks, I’ve met with lots of staff and faculty (coffee!), and I dove into the existing collection data with the registrars. We decided that a natural first project was to release the collection metadata as CC0 for every object in the collection. It was a great way to get to know collections fast…and it turns out that we have a computer science department eager to use the metadata.

So WCMA’s collection data is now available on Github. (Special thanks to Rachel Tassone for wrangling TMS with me, and Tina Olsen for the lightning-fast green light.) It’s basic collection data right now. We’ll add more fields to it as we go, and we’ll update it periodically with new information. We pulled it from the front-end of TMS, so that it can be done by a registrar without direct access to the database.

Quick-and-dirty Google Sheets dataviz

Releasing the metadata is a new way to use the collection. It offers a birds-eye perspective of the collection as a whole. We’ll record what stories people tell with the data. And we’ll find ways to reflect that, to encourage more use of the collection. Release. Record. Reflect. (Rinse. Repeat.)

More to come.

This project made possible by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation.