Cataloguing Process
Why 19th Century Black Artists?
I chose this topic for my presentation because of the power of digital tools within the Information Science field to make information visible, bringing to life and life the narratives and work of historically underrepresented groups within the art historical cannon. I was drawn to this idea after reading [INSERT ESSAY HERE]. Although this website does not scratch the surface of the important work created before the 19thc by Black Artists, my attempt was to create a digital location where a micro-exhibition could exist putting all of this work "in the same room".
If I had more technological skills, I would love for this to be a collaborative project in the sense that other institutions or users could add information (either images, metadata, ect..) to the site growing the "collection". I would also love to implement Linked Data Principles, connecting the artists and their work to authority files.
In regards to sources I was pleased to find a majority of my information via the Smithsonian Institution Collections Search Center. What I didn't find there I found on Wikidata.
Romantic Landscape by Robert S. Duncanson is my favorite piece in this digital collection. I catalogued this piece as an image, as in my opinion work has a physical connotation an experience that cannot be filled through a digital collection. Images can be replicated while a work denotes orginiality.
I find this piece visually compelling and am drawn to the colors of this landscape. I recieved the object data from the Smithsonian Institute's Digital Collection. I was gladly suprised to find almost all of the information I needed on these artists through the Smithosonian American Art Museum, or the National Museum of African American history. I really appreciated Smithosonian Collections Search Center as a central place where I could find data on the art objects from several Smithsonian Institutions in one place.
I initially planned on enriching the data, adding information in the "Description" to contextualize the works themselves. I was disheartened to find the process of finding this information was a larger task that I initially realized. If I were to go further with this project, I would like to either datascrape for relevant information and or make this a collaborative project where other users from smaller institutions and archives can add information. Becuase of the type of information presented (Dimensions, Date, Object Number, ect...) I did not come across any contested Metadata elements.