Participating and Curating within Digital Heritage
Collections: A Case Study Analysis
Media Studies - New Media and Digital Culture Master Thesis
Faculty of Humanities - University of Amsterdam
Lianne Kersten
10191518
Supervisor: Drs. S.M.C. (Sabine) Niederer
Second Reader: Dr. J.M. (Joost) Bolten
June 23 2016
Abstract
In order to preserve our cultural heritage, worldwide more and more museums have digitised their collections. Besides the aspect of preservation, museums digitise their collection in order to decrease the current divergence between the vast, and ever-growing, amount of cultural heritage in the world and the relatively small selection museums are capable of showing. However, simply digitising a museum’s collection is not necessarily sufficient to adhere to the goal of making more cultural heritage visible to the public. Collections need to be openly accessible, and museums ought to find ways in which they can make their collection manageable and engaging to their audience. In this research, three case studies (the Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, and the Museum of Digital Art) are examined, that each wield a different online policy and represent a different gradation of openness when it comes to their digital collection. These cases were analysed using a theoretical framework that covers the field of digitisation, participation and curating. In order to form the basis on which these case studies are examined, this research portrays the various factors that make digitising and opening up a digital art collection possible. Furthermore, these new found ways of public participation and open accessibility can have consequences for the authoritative voice and curatorial role of a cultural heritage institution. In order to place these changing roles into context and analyse how this might affect the relation between the museum and its audience online, this research provides a comprehensive outlook on what the curatorial role traditionally entails. Conclusive, this research formulates an outcome aimed at cultural heritage institutions and contributes to the future of handling digital art collections.
Keywords
art, digitisation, cultural heritage, accessibility, crowdsourcing, curating
Introduction 6
1. The Digitisation of Art Collections 10
1.1 Open vs. closed: online cultural heritage institutions 11
1.2 Ongoing projects in the field of digital cultural heritage 14
1.3 Cultural heritage in the public domain 16
2. Moving from Dissemination to Participation in the Museum World 17
2.1 The rise of Web 2.0 and our participatory culture 18
2.2 Viewing the museum as a distributed network 19
2.3 Crowdsourcing within online collections 19
2.4 The challenges of participation 22
3. Curating 23
3.1 Characterising the curator 24
3.2 Changing roles within the digital heritage sector 25
4. Case Studies: Methodology 26
5. Case Study One: The Rijksmuseum 28
5.1 Digitisation: the process of digitising the Rijksmuseum’s collection 28
5.2 Participation: 29
5.2.1 Rijksstudio 30
5.2.2 Discovering the Rijksmuseum’s collection 31
5.2.3 Creating with the Rijksmuseum’s collection 32
collection 33 5.2.5 How the Rijksmuseum uses crowdsourcing to
improve their collection 34 5.3 Curating: the curatorial role within the Rijksmuseum’s
online collection 37
6. Case Study Two: The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision 38 6.1 Digitisation: the process of digitising within the Netherlands
Institute for Sound and Vision’s collection 38 6.1.1 The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision 39
6.2 Participation: 40
6.2.1 Facing the challenge of accessibility 40 6.2.2 Crowdsourcing at the Netherlands Institute for
Sound and Vision 41
Crowdsourcing: Open Images 42 Crowdsourcing: Waisda? 43 Crowdsourcing: The Sound and Vision
Wiki 45
6.2.3 Connecting to their audience 45 YouTube 46 The active stimulation of re-usage 47
6.2.4 The target audience of The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision’s online collection 47 6.3 Curating: the curatorial role within the Institute of Sound and 48
Vision’s online collection
7.1 Digitisation: The process of digitising within the Museum of
Digital Arts 49
7.1.1 What is digital art? 49
7.1.2 The Museum of Digital Art 50 7.2 Participation 51
7.2.1 The target audience of the Museum of Digital 52 Art’s collection
7.3 Curating: the curatorial role within the Museum of Digital Art’s
Collection 53
Conclusion 55
Introduction
According to the International Council of Museums, a museum is ‘a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development that is open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purpose of education, study and enjoyment’ (ICOM). The overarching objective of museums is to make the vast amount of cultural heritage that exists on this planet available to the public (Li, Liew and Su 646). However, due to limiting factors such as fixed exhibition space and time constraints, often only a small part of the entire collection of a museum is being put on display; the remaining objects are being kept in the museum’s depot, unavailable for the audience to see (Li, Liew and Su 646). Besides space and time limitations, some works are simply too fragile to ever be considered to be exhibited, leaving them invisible to the public (Li, Liew and Su 646). To illustrate this current situation in the museum world, information and communication researchers Richard Yu-Chang Li, Alan Wee-Chung Liew and Wen-Poh Su cite the example of the National Palace Museum of Taiwan, whose collection contains more than 650,000 objects and keeps expanding every year. Exhibiting their entire collection would take, if every exhibition lasted three months, a grand total of thirty years (Li, Liew and Su 646). To illustrate this discrepancy between what is ‘there’ and what is being shown even more: in The Netherlands only five percent of the entire collection that Dutch museums own is on display, leaving ninety-five percent locked away in depots (De Lange n. pag.). The sum of all the works that visitors can view in museums on a given day forms only the tip of the iceberg. And, as museum and Web consultant Klaus Müller notes, this considerable part of our cultural heritage that is being stored in museum archives and repositories will only keep on growing (21).
As can be seen, the status quo in the museum world as outlined above contradicts with the objective that is at the core of every museum: to make the world’s cultural heritage accessible to the public. This raised the question on how to solve, or at least reduce, this discrepancy. Museums increasingly seem to be searching for an answer in the process of digitisation: more and more cultural heritage institutions are digitising their collections (Barranha and Martins 5) and museums are even starting to view their online audience as equally important as their physical visitors (Parry 1). Also, after this process of digitisation, institutions are opening up those collections to a wider audience more often (Barranha and Martins 5). As Trebor Scholz, Associate Professor of Culture and Media at the Eugene Lang College and The New School New York, describes, opposed to keeping digitised art ‘stowed
away in online gated communities’, making art openly available instead will allow the
material to ‘creatively re-purposed, edited, and shared’ (202). Thus, granting the public access to digitised art collections opens up a whole new array of possibilities.
But how does this public access to digitised collections take shape in practice? Because of the arrival of Web 2.0, a phenomenon I will further elaborate on in chapter 2, people are
increasingly expecting to participate in online collections, instead of ‘passively observe’ the material. So, as Jill Cousins, executive director of heritage foundation Europeana (an
organisation which I will further introduce in paragraph 1.3), states, a common question that heritage institutions now ask themselves is: “If consumers have the right to access and participate in their culture, how can we deliver a cultural offer that is best-suited to the needs and expectations of an always-connected, always-on, multi-platform digital world? What would this mean for our institutions and their positioning in the cultural landscape […]?” (n. pag.). Developments in this field can have far-reaching consequences for the relationships between cultural heritage institutions and their audiences (Cousins n. pag.). The digitisation of art might very well add more value to or broaden ‘the traditional activities of acquiring, preserving and serving content to the user’, activities that have always been largely allocated to the curator working at the museum (Cousins n. pag.). However, the digitisation of art and presenting art collections online might also narrow this role. In any case, the mass digitisation developments as ascribed above spark questions surrounding the role of the museum and the curatorial activities within online heritage collections, which I will further examine in my research.
The digitisation within the museum world has often resulted in cultural heritage institutions making their entire collection available online. A development that might, to some degree, cease the curatorial aspect of selecting and presenting a selection of the museum’s objects, which may also carry consequences for the way art will be presented and experienced in the future. In my research, when looking at these aspects of selecting, presenting and participating, I will refer to these tasks as ‘the curatorial role’. A term that should not be interpreted as a singular person, but can be interpreted as the one(s) that have the possibility to select, present and ensure quality and accessibility within the digital collection. This role can also, as will become clear in my case studies, be fragmented between multiple parties.
The potential broadening or reappointment of these curatorial activities leads me to first examine the traditional role of the curator. In this way, by looking at what this role traditionally entails and what duties, values and importance are ascribed to it, I can examine what it means for museums to give the public online access to their full collection and what
will be the consequence of this possible expanding or disappearing of the curatorial role. A role that, traditionally seen, has been delimited and ascribed to singular persons, might require a different interpretation when it comes to digital heritage collections. The audience shift from passive observers to active participants will, in all probability, have an influence in this process. Therefore, within this research, the curatorial role is heavily intertwined with further examining public participation in online heritage collections.
Further research into this relatively new field is required to gain insight into how institutions are dealing with these new found possibilities. In my research I will provide insight into this matter by answering the following research question: ‘In what way(s) do museums attempt to engage their audience with their online collections, and what curatorial role does this type of public participation allow?’
I will discuss various different fields that together contribute to answering the overarching research question as formulated above. First, I will look at the museum as an institution and provide an overview of how digitisation emerged in the world of cultural heritage and how this inherently meant institutions had to decide whether or not to open their digitised collections. I will introduce and discuss several projects that are striving for
openness and for digital art to be placed into the public domain. Then I will move from these processes and developments that are correlated with the digitisation of art, to what actually can or does happen with the cultural heritage once it is digitised. In this second step, I will elaborate on how the public can participate in online collections and how this stands in direct relation to the shift in the museum world from dissemination to participation, wherein I will also discuss what role the rise of Web 2.0 and the museum as a distributed network have had in this process. I will then provide an overview of the ways in which audiences are stimulated to participate in online heritage collections through crowdsourcing. The third step is looking at the curatorial aspect and who or what can be assigned this role in digital cultural heritage collections. After forming the theoretical framework as outlined above, I will proceed to discuss my case studies on the Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the Museum of Digital Art. I will discuss all three first on the basis of their type of online collection and the digital policy they wield; second, the ways of public participation they stimulate and third, what the curatorial role entails within the collection. Intertwined with my literary framework, these case studies will contribute to answering my research question, as discussed in the conclusion.
Before proceeding, a commentary has to be made regarding born-digital and digital-art. Thus far I have discussed the digitisation of non-digital art objects. However, when
exploring the ways in which digital cultural collections are handled online, the nature (digital or non-digital) of the cultural object becomes irrelevant. Given the fact that the focus of this research lies in the digital heritage world, the mere online presence of the object is enough. My research will therefore also cover born-digital art. However, as will become clear in my third case study, the born-digital art movement does indeed create some new and interesting opportunities when handling digital art. But what is born-digital art exactly? In her edited book New Media in the White Cube and Beyond: Curatorial Models for Digital Art,
Christiane Paul (Associate Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School and Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City) starts with pointing out the ambiguity in the terminology regarding technological art forms throughout the years (1). What started with ‘computer art’, evolved into ‘multimedia art’ and later ‘new media art’ – all being different terms for the ‘born-digital’ art movement (Paul 3). In my research I will use the term born-digital art when referring to art that came into existence through the digital. A broad though comprehensive explanation of born-digital art is provided by Paul, who states that:
Art using digital technologies as a medium can manifest itself in various forms and explores a broad range of topics. It can manifest itself as installation with or without network components; as virtual reality project that uses devices such as headsets and data gloves to immerse viewers/participants in a virtual world; as art created for and distributed on the Internet (browser-based or not); as software art that has been coded by the artist(s); as mobile or locative media art that makes use of ‘nomadic’ devices (mobile phones, Game Boys, and PalmPilots or wearables with embedded
microprocessors), the Global Positioning System (GPS), or wireless networks (3). I will discuss this art movement and its proposed impact on the art world in further depth in my third case study on the Museum of Digital Art. First, I will elaborate on the process of digitising analogue art.
1.
The digitisation of art collections
The situation as portrayed in the introduction to a certain degree contravenes with the
museum’s goal as an institute to represent ‘the world’s natural and commonwealth’, as Müller cites the AAM Code of Ethics for Museums (21). Thus, as described earlier, in order to better adhere to their mission, more and more museums are digitising their collections and making them accessible to the public through online databases (Barranha and Martins 5). This digitisation movement in the museum world started in the beginning of the 21st century and
has continued to expand ever since (Li, Liew and Su 646). The majority of museums now have their own website where you can find images of their collection, and during the last decade, due to the significant technological developments that have occurred in recent years, the process and possibilities of digitisation have advanced even more (Li, Liew and Su 646). Besides the aspect of accessibility, long-term preservation is another goal of digitising art (Aroyo and Oomen 139). This was for example the case with the Images for the Future project in 2014, the largest digitisation program that the Netherlands has known to this day (Pekel, Images n. pag.). Images for the Future was initiated in order to save old audiovisual material, nitrate film tapes, that had started to slowly perish, risking to lose fragments of Dutch history permanently (Pekel, Images n. pag.). After digitising the tapes, the selection of digital documents was made available in an online archive (Pekel, Images n. pag.). The idea behind cultural archiving is to preserve our heritage for future generations, with its main functions ‘maintaining, providing access to, and making available resources’ (Dekker, The Museum Archive n. pag.). Note that, as I have briefly mentioned in my introduction, cultural archiving as discussed here and further on in this research also includes the archiving of born-digital objects, not just analogue objects that were digitised.
Public participation and engagement with these digital collections however, both focus points in my research, can only occur when cultural heritage institutions have ‘opened up’ their collection to the public, a term I will explain further in the next paragraph. As
independent curator and researcher Annet Dekker notes, over the last years, a shift has taken place to more openness and integrality when it comes to our cultural heritage (The Museum Archive n. pag.). A shift that, like the Images for the Future project, takes shape in the
growing digitisation of old documents and photographs in order to preserve them digitally and make them openly available to the public (Dekker, The Museum Archive n. pag.). But this shift can also be connected to the opening of museums that are exclusively dedicated to
born-digital art, a phenomenon I will discuss later on in chapter 7. However, openness in regards to digital objects is not always so self-evident, as I will now continue to discuss.
1.1 Open vs. closed: online cultural heritage institutions
According to Johan Oomen (manager at the Knowledge and Innovation department of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision) and Lora Aroyo (researcher at the Web & Media group, Department of Computer Science at the Free University Amsterdam), the mass
digitisation of analogue artefacts is essential for heritage institutions to become ‘an integral part of the Web’ (Aroyo and Oomen 139). It is not surprising that, with these developments in mind, the majority of cultural institutions have jumped on the digitisation wagon over the course of recent years. However, as seen in practice, digitising cultural collections does not necessary mean the public obtains more or better access. Some institutions choose to keep (part of) their online collections closed off to the public, protected by copyright barriers, or to provide users only with, for example, low-resolution or watermarked images. A stance that might stem from the simple fact that culture goods used to exist solely in analogue form, making it possible for institutions to treat them like property (Hughes and Lang 2). However, as a result of digitising, cultural objects have become ‘fluid’ and therefore easy to distribute freely (Hughes and Lang 2). This notion of ‘fluidity’ that Hughes and Lang describe
encompasses the given that digital images of artworks can be easily saved, edited, and recombined. Therefore, even though the original images are still property of the cultural institution, the saved digital representations are ‘owned’ by many, constantly diffusing further on the Internet. This given, in combination with changing audience expectations, seems to make it inevitable for museums to reconsider their online policy. As Enrico Bertacchini (assistant professor in the Department of Economics, University of Turin) and Federico Morando (researcher at the NEXA Centre for Internet and Society, Politecnico di Torino) note, policies based on exclusive control over digital art images are not compatible with new patterns of use and distribution on the Web, something I will come back to in the next chapter (60). Merete Sanderhoff (curator and advisor at the National Gallery of Denmark) even warns that when cultural institutions do not adjust to these new patterns, they risk becoming ‘at best relics of a bygone era, at worst stagnant and forgotten cultural archives’ ( 30). As digital heritage organisation Europeana states, people want to ‘re-use and play with the material, to interact with others and participate in something new’ (We Transform 10). As for example is the case with the Rijksmuseum, which I will discuss in further depth as one of my case
studies, who successfully employs an open policy when it comes to their digital heritage and encourages users to actively participate and contribute to their collections. Audience
engagement and public participation, both becoming increasingly important, start with museums employing an open policy when it comes to their online collections.
So what does this ‘open policy’ entail? Opposite of closed institutions are the ones that do wield an open access policy. A collection is referred to as open when a museum has ‘opened up’ their digital database, plus the accompanying data, to be freely used by anyone (Kelly 406). Once digitised and made part of an open online network, cultural objects can be ‘shared, recommended, remixed, mashed, embedded and cited’, creating the possibility for the public to discover even the most ‘obscure artefacts’, that might otherwise remain locked away in the museum’s depot (Aroyo and Oomen 139). Openness seems to be a growing trend in the museum world that is increasingly willing to share their collection and digital data (Lévy 108). The OpenGLAM initiative (GLAM being an abbreviation of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) strongly promotes the openness of digital collections and describes openness as ‘a piece of data or content that is free to use, reuse, and redistribute by anyone - subject only, at most, to the requirement to give credit to the author and/or making any resulting work available under the same terms as the original work’ (n. pag.). The
OpenGLAM initiative is organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation, a global non-profit network that advocates the free sharing of information, including both content and data (Open Knowledge n. pag.). It is dedicated to building a ‘cultural commons’ that is freely accessible to anyone by supporting cultural institutions with the opening of their collections. This theory of commons lies at the base of most policies of cultural heritage institutions that stimulate public participation and public engagement, such as The Rijksmuseum and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, which I will both discuss in my first two case studies.
But what is referred to exactly when talking about a cultural commons? A commons can be seen as, according to Elinor Ostrom (professor of Political Science) and Charlotte Hess (Director of the Digital Library of the Commons at Indiana University) who coined the term in 2007, ‘a general concept that refers to a resource shared by a group of people’ (5). Seeing digital heritage in the light of cultural commons provides us with a new way of looking at sharing (Hess 3). When we think of digital cultural heritage as commons, as Jill Cousins, executive director at The Europeana Foundation describes, we must see ‘digital
representations of artwork, writing, music and film and the metadata behind them as shared public resources that all have an interest in both accessing and maintaining’ (n. pag.). In the museum world the belief that digitised artwork should be freely accessible as cultural
commons is becoming more and more widespread (Sanderhoff 64). According to the ‘creative commons’ theory, the focus in the digital domain should be more on the importance of understanding ‘who shares what, how we share it and how we sustain commons for future generations’ (Hess 3). Supporters of this open policy believe that institutions should provide as many people as possible with an easy way to access the institutions content, while at the same time encouraging the freely available content to be shared, enriched and processed by users, whether they are citizens, students, scholars, researchers or commercial ventures (Von Haller Grønbaek 142). The universal belief that lies beneath cultural commons is that the value of our culture is, as IT-lawyer Martin Von Haller Grønbaek describes, ‘directly proportional’ to the number of people who get a chance to experience it (141). By providing open access, cultural institutions can disseminate as much knowledge and insight possible (Von Haller Grønbaek 141). This endeavour to publicise more and more objects might affect the curatorial role within these collections, a matter that I will return to later on in my
research, but also how we look at art. In the light of commons, digitised artworks are not seen as ‘fixed’ objects that are passively consumed by the audience, but as ‘vibrant’ things that should be experienced together and shared amongst the population (Von Haller Grønbaek 141). This concept of vibrant digitised art correlates with the concept of fluidity by Hughes and Lang as mentioned earlier in paragraph 1.1. Digitising art makes analogue objects fluid and as a result, because they become easy to distribute, save, edit and recombine, they can be experienced in a vibrant, more dynamic manner.
As Von Haller Grønbaek describes, this process of sharing will ultimately harvest more culture because it forms the foundation on which ‘our present and future culture, democracy, economy, and all other aspects of society are based’ (Von Haller Grønbaek 142). This idea of sparking creativity by sharing is also noted by Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution, who states that when creators have free and unrestricted access to the work of others through the public domain, ‘innovation flourishes’ (Edson 136). Currently, certain institutions like the Rijksmuseum and the
Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision are even actively encouraging users to get creative with their digital collection, something I will illustrate further in my case studies.
Organisations such as OpenGLAM and Europeana, that I will continue to discuss hereafter, are part of this movement that promotes open accessibility of online collections. I will proceed with providing several other concrete examples to give further insight into the current digital museum landscape. Later on in my research I will derive from this point of open access by looking into three case studies that have, although all three in different
manners and gradations, adopted an open policy. It is interesting to outline what is currently occurring within these three ‘open’ institutions when it comes to accessibility, public
participation, user engagement and the curatorial role, and in this way explore whether or not connections can be made between these factors and the degree of openness. I will come back to this in my case studies.
1.2 Ongoing projects in the field of digital cultural heritage
Over the last two decades, major governmental investments have been made in the digitisation of cultural heritage collections worldwide and as a result, numerous digital heritage projects were initiated and put into effect. Although this research is specifically focussed on three museums, it is possible more comprehensive conclusions can be made. Therefore, I will now continue to elaborate on a number of important digital heritage projects in order to be able to position my case studies in the current digitisation landscape.
In Europe, the European Commission has invested in the digitisation and online accessibility of Europe’s cultural heritage, resulting in Europe’s joint digital cultural library: Europeana, also referred to as ‘Europe’s collective memory’ (Valtysson 151). The Europeana project was launched in 2008 with the goal of bringing together all of Europe’s cultural heritage in one space, online, and make it accessible to everyone that is interested in viewing it (Europeana, Now Online 1). Europeana’s collection contains over 45 million items derived from more than 3500 cultural institutions from across Europe (Europeana, About n. pag.). By collaborating with cultural institutions that have digitised their collections and using their metadata in the Europeana repository, the collections of all of these institutions are captured and made available to a wider audience (Europeana, About n. pag.). Europeana is founded on the theory of ‘commons’, a concept introduced earlier in paragraph 1.1 (Europeana, About n. pag.). Their goal is to create ‘a true “Cultural Commons” for Europe’ by connecting ‘content provider, Europeana Network members and end-users as a single community that is mutually reinforcing and constantly finding innovative ways of engaging new user groups’ (Cousins n. pag.). There are initiatives similar to Europeana outside of Europe as well. Take for example DigitalNZ, the Europeana of New Zealand; DigitalNZ gathers New Zealand's digital content, including the digitised collections of cultural institutions, in one database. Similar is The Digital Public Library of America who collects America’s cultural heritage of libraries, museums and archives and stores it in their online database.
As Müller states, the number of museums that digitise their collections will, in all likelihood, increase, given the fact that they are supported by large organisations such as the Australian Museums Online (AMOL), the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), the American National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) and the Digital Heritage Initiative of the European Commission (25). This growing awareness and concern for the digitisation of the world’s cultural heritage will in all probability result in a, as Müller predicts, unique access to online collections that will subsequently generate ‘significant changes in how we look at, consume, and interpret cultural artefacts’ (25). Needless to say that further research into these developments has become urgent.
Another well-known digital art initiative is The Google Art Project. For this venture, Google partnered up with over 150 different museums from Europe and the United States to provide high-resolution virtual collections from around the world to the public, and in turn provide options to personalize and share that same collection. By providing high quality images and options to personalise, The Google Art project already taps into the shift from, as Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Museums in London points out, being concerned with ‘quantity of information and getting as many objects online as possible’, to focus on more ‘depth and quality of content’ (Proctor 215). Or as Eric Johnson, webmaster at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, describes as a transition from ‘content to context’ (Proctor 215). In short, an important part within open online collections of museums seems the accompanying context and what you can do with the digital objects, something I will continue to discuss further later on. All in all, the prevailing question seems to have become: what to do after digitisation?
A scholarly reflection on this topic comes in the form of a study named Culture Vortex. In 2010, the Institute of Network Cultures launched the innovation program Culture Vortex, a project focussed on encouraging public engagement in online cultural collections. According to the Institute, there are more and more questions being raised about the online distribution of creative material (Dekker, Culture Vortex n. pag.). As they state: ‘Until today, research and funding programmes focussed mainly on digitising and licensing large
collections’, but after completing this process of digitisation, the institutions are now confronted with a whole new, online, audience that they have to engage in their digital collections (Dekker, Culture Vortex n. pag.). And what does this online engagement involve to begin with? Culture Vortex tries to answer questions on how an audience can be involved with digital cultural material, and how cultural institutions can set up a network where this audience can transform into participants that can ‘share, describe, review, tag, reuse or
otherwise interact’ with the material (Dekker, Culture Vortex n. pag.). As the researchers of Culture Vortex state, ‘audience participation’ seems to me ‘the magical phrase’ for the cultural sector (Dekker, Culture Vortex n. pag.). There are different types of participation, from ‘active, to reactive and passive’ that Culture Vortex distinguishes, such as Do-It-Yourself, submitting own content, remixing or labelling existing content, working together with other users or selecting and making exhibitions from the provided content or
liking/disliking buttons (Dekker, Culture Vortex n. pag.). I will discuss these different types of participation in further depth in paragraph 2.3. First, I will look into what it means for digital art to become part of the public domain in the first place, and therefore accessible to
participation, and how this trend of participation came into being.
1.3 Cultural heritage in the public domain
We have seen that more and more cultural heritage institutions decide to open up their collections and that there are numerous digitisation initiatives set up to digitise cultural heritage on an even larger scale. But how is it possible that these online works of art become available for free, without any restrictions?
Artwork that is made freely available becomes part of the public domain, which in this context has been defined as ‘all the knowledge and information that does not have copyright protection and can be used without restriction’ (Europeana, Charter 2). When a work of art is digitised and then made publicly accessible, its digital representation falls in the public domain, and analogue works that belonged to the public domain remain there after they have been digitised. According to Europeana, ‘a healthy and thriving public domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of society’ (Europeana, Charter 1). It in fact forms the very basis on which society can form new knowledge and create new cultural works
(Europeana, Charter 1). Take, as Europeana argues, for example Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the paintings of Leonardo or Newton’s Laws of Motion – all cultural works that were
indispensable for society to derive from in order to create new ideas and work (Europeana, Charter 1). As Europeana states: ‘Society constantly re-uses, reinterprets and reproduces material in the public domain (Charter 1), new theories, inventions, cultural works and the like are indebted to the knowledge and creativity of previous centuries’ (Europeana, Charter 3). The Internet provides us with an amount of access to a digitised part of the world’s knowledge and creativity like never before. According to Europeana, this mass digitisation will create ‘new opportunities for sharing and creative re-use, empowering people to explore
and respond to our shared heritage in new ways that our legislation has yet to catch up with’ (Charter 3). In line with their role as guardians of our cultural heritage, the first step for museums is to digitise their collections and make them accessible to the public. However, as Europeana notes, it is also of interest that cultural institutions facilitate creative engagement by ‘providing the raw materials for contemporary culture, science, innovation and economic growth’ (Europeana, Charter 3). I will continue to discuss this notion of engagement in the following chapter.
2.
Moving from Dissemination to Participation in the Museum
World
As I have discussed in the previous chapter, the main objective of museums as ‘stewards of cultural memory’ is to serve the public good by providing people access to cultural heritage (Owens 121). The ongoing process of digitalisation that I have outlined provides museums, libraries and archives with a legion of new opportunities to adhere to this mission (Owens 121). Opportunities that might not be merely ‘optional’, but possibly even mandatory to keep engaging their audience (Owens 121). So in order for cultural institutions to secure their role as disseminators of cultural knowledge they are increasingly adopting new ways to keep up with the growing use of technology and the new possibilities of spreading knowledge that these technologies encompass (Turner 33). As Turner argues, these new technologies can predominantly be seen as ‘engaging’ and focussed on involving users (35). The degree of this new found involvement depends on to what extent the digital technology has been developed specifically focussed on engagement (Turner 35). Museums seem to progressively become aware of this, because more and more of them are implementing new technologies and have shifted their focus from objects, to users (Kelly 407). As Lynda Kelly, Head of Learning at the Australian National Martime Museum, describes, the fundamental assumption when it comes to the future of museums is that they ‘soon need to shift from being a singular authority to a participant and encourager of intellectual and social engagement among its visitors’ (407). A concern also stated by Nancy Proctor, Deputy Director for Digital Experience and Communications at Baltimore Museum of Art, who stated in an interview with Annet Dekker that ‘only by making themselves much more dependent on their public, can art museums continue to exist’ (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). By undergoing this change to more
participation, institutions are transforming in more responsive institutions (Kelly 407). The Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the Museum of Digital Arts are clear examples of this change. But what is at the root of this transformation to
participation? The answer might well lie in the arrival of Web 2.0.
2.1 The rise of Web 2.0 and our participatory culture
Media critic and scholar Henry Jenkins described participatory culture as a culture:
With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship
whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (Jenkins et al. 3).
The rise of this so-called participatory culture stands in direct relation to the rise of Web 2.0. As Kelly states, the arrival of Web 2.0 formed ‘the catalyst’ for the contemporary
transformation to participation and is responsible for accelerating the process of change (405). Web 2.0 is build on ‘user-generated content, usability and interoperability’, in contrast to Web 1.0 where the focus lied on providing information and viewers who passively viewed the provided content, with little space for sharing, feedback or conversation (Wikipedia Web 2.0 n. pag.). Kelly quotes John Seely Brown (Visiting Scholar and Advisor at the University of Southern California) and Richard P. Adler (Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and Principal of People & Technology, a research and consulting firm in Cupertino, California), who wrote that ‘the most profound impact of Web 2.0 is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning’ (405), a task falling under the overarching job of the museum. Therefore, as Kelly states, Web 2.0 is ‘fundamentally challenging the very nature of our public institutions’ as it positions not the organisation itself, but the audience ‘at the centre of the equation’ (408). Our present-day participatory culture is a result of the crowd ‘absorbing and responding to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways’ (Jenkins et al. 8). Because of this, museum audiences have developed new expectations for participation when visiting a museum, not only physically but virtually as well (Stein 217). In my research I will examine, first in more general and later on in more specific terms in my case studies, ways in which museums can respond to these new virtual
participatory expectations. So how can one view the museum, in its entirety, in the light of Web 2.0?
2.2 Viewing the museum as a distributed network
In an interview with Dekker, Proctor introduces perceiving the museum as a distributed network. An interesting viewpoint that is applicable to this research given the fact that both the Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the Museum of Digital Art have become distributed networks. By naming the museum a distributed network, Proctor puts the emphasis on the fact that museums nowadays exist on many different platforms. Platforms such as, besides the museum’s own website, Flickr, YouTube or Instagram. In this paradigm the museum has no centre and thus the focus moves to the audience that is
‘clustered’ around it (Dekker, Interview n. pag.).
According to Proctor, the accretion of the museum into a distributed network is not just a result of technological developments, but also of the cultural shift that has come with the introduction of social media (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). It is not the mere fact that more technological innovative resources are available, but also the expectations that society has developed as a result of these innovations. Consequently, the museum does not only communicate one-directionally to disseminate ‘experts and expertise, content and
information’, the communication is now more widespread and works both ways (Dekker, Interview n. pag.).
In conclusion, the museum seems to be increasingly becoming a participatory
distributed network. But how does this conversion take shape in practice? As mentioned, the Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the Museum for Digital Art are all three examples of institutions that have adjusted to this new role of being a distributed network and have adopted, although in different gradations, ways in which the audience is able to participate in their collections. I will return to this in more detail further on in the case studies in chapter 5, 6 and 7. First, I will look into a common form of public participation: crowdsourcing.
2.3 Crowdsourcing within online collections
As digital archivist Trevor Owens remarks, what the growing number of cultural heritage institutions, that digitised their collections and opened up their online database, mostly fail to
do is give their audience an opportunity to do more than simply consume the digitised information (128). This is where crowdsourcing comes in. Crowdsourcing can provide individuals a chance to actually ‘engage with and contribute to public memory’ (Owens 128). This engaging in collections can, in line with the aforementioned trend of participatory culture, contribute to the distributing of cultural heritage, one of the main reasons these digital collections were developed to begin with (Owens 128). As Owens states: ‘Instead of simply giving them the ability to browse or poke around in digital collections, we can invite them to participate. We are in a position to let the users of these collections leave a mark on the collections. Instead of browsing through a collection they literally become authors of our historical record’ (128). So what am I talking about exactly when using the term
‘crowdsourcing’?
Jeff Howe, editor at Wired Magazine, coined the term crowdsourcing in 2006 as ‘the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and
outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by individuals’ (Crowdsourcing, n. pag.). Carletti et al. Further describe ‘crowdsourcing’ in the cultural domain as a recent and still evolving phenomenon that covers different forms of public participation and contribution. According to them, more and more cultural institutions are exploring this experience of ‘the active contribution of an undefined public’ (Carletti et al. n. pag.). According to Owens, crowdsourcing should be seen as ‘a powerful tool’ that provides institutions not only with the possibility to enhance and improve their cultural heritage data, but also with a way to deeply engage their audience (122). So what type of crowdsourcing projects can be specified when it comes to the handling of digital collections of museums?
In order to form the framework of which I will discuss my case studies later on in my research, I will now proceed to provide a (brief) classification of different types of
crowdsourcing. Aroyo and Oomen have presented a typology of crowdsourcing activities implemented by cultural heritage institutions which they link to ‘standard activities’ carried out by these institutions (Carletti et al. n. pag.) They base their typology on the five-stage Digital Content Life Cycle Model of the National Library of New Zealand, a model
comprised of five stages: creating, describing, managing, discovering and using plus reusing (140). Within this model, different types of crowdsourcing can be defined (as formulated by Aroyo and Oomen):
Correction and Transcription - Inviting users to correct and/or transcribe outputs of digitisation processes.
Contextualisation - Adding contextual knowledge to objects, e.g. by telling stories or writing articles/wiki pages with contextual data.
Complementing Collection - Active pursuit of additional objects to be included in a (Web)exhibit or collection.
Classification - Gathering descriptive metadata related to objects in a collection. Social tagging, is a well-known example.
Co-curation - Using inspiration/expertise of non-professional curators to create (Web)exhibits.
Crowdfunding - Collective cooperation of people who pool their money and other resources together to support efforts initiated by others (Carletti et al. n. pag.). Within the projects that deal with existing collections, as being the case with online catalogs of physical collections, computer science and new media researchers Laura Carletti, Derek McAuley et al. have classified the terms ‘curating’, ‘revising’ and ‘locating’ (n. pag.). Curating implies ‘selecting, classifying, describing and organising given objects’ (Carletti et al.). An example of crowdsourced curating took place at the Kröller-Müller Museum in The Netherlands, where a public-curated exhibition was held in 2010 that was comprised of artwork from their own collection. Furthermore, the exposition Expose: My Favourite
Landscape, that was curated by children who picked their favourite landscape artworks from a set of fifty objects selected by the museum. Twenty of those works were then displayed during a real life exhibition (Carletti et al. n. pag.). Similarly, in Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts invited the public to pick works for a themed Impressionist exhibition (Museum of Fine Arts n. pag.). From a selection of fifty works picked by the museum, the audience could vote for their favourite paintings. The top thirty received a spot in the physical exhibition Boston Loves Impressionism (Museum of Fine Arts n. pag.). Revising implies ‘analysing,
reconsidering, correcting, and improving given objects’, for instance with the Freeze Tag project by the Brooklyn Museum, that was launched as a follow-up of the earlier Tag! You’re it! curated exhibition (Carletti et al. n. pag.). Locating consists of the placement of given objects ‘in physical space, telling stories and providing information on locations’ (Carletti et al. n. pag.). An example of this, provided by Carletti et al. is that of the Royal Pavilion & Museums of Brighton and Hove, who invited the public to place objects from their collection on a map, adding additional information and location details (n. pag.).
The reason I have made the distinction between these different types of crowdsourcing explicit in this chapter is so that I can use it as groundwork for my case studies, and to
examine how the curatorial role is distributed within these crowdsourcing categories. First however, I will look into the challenges that come with this new found participation.
2.4 The challenges of participation
Besides preserving the world’s cultural heritage and providing the public access to their collections, ensuring the quality of those collections is another pillar of the museum as an institute. As I have briefly mentioned in the introduction, and as I will continue to discuss in chapter 3, this ensuring of quality falls under the responsibility of the curator. However, as Proctor states, anno 2016 the question of quality should not be solely answered by the museum itself, but is instead an ongoing debate between audience and institution (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). Hence the rise of more participatory cultural institutions. Museums can nonetheless, with their expertise, help us ‘sift through a lot of the noise’ (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). However, according to Proctor, the museum as a distributed network and user of social media can also hugely improve the quality of information and collections that museums make available (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). A point of view shared by Kristen Eschenfelder
(Associate Professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Michelle Caswell (Ph. D. student at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison), who in their research emphasize that by endorsing strategies for users to access and reuse collections have the potential to ‘engage amateur experts in assisting with descriptions and the addition of context to artworks, thereby increasing the value of collections and public commitment to artworks’ (n. pag.). Proctor refers to The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney as an example; The
Powerhouse puts up its entire collection online, even including all of their collection
management records and everything else they thought might be relevant and of interest. And with success: because citizen curators and citizen scientists who had substantial knowledge about the objects came forward with extra information and in this way helped the museum to expand and improve their collection (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). The Rijksmuseum has carried out similar projects that I will elaborate on further in chapter 5. In cases like this, the museum can still play a big part as a ‘trusted authority or course’, as Proctor states, by for example ‘pointing towards great content about the collection that is essentially published by third parties’ (Dekker, Interview n. pag.). This model of the museum as a distributed network
does not necessarily mean the curatorial role of the museum will disappear, it will simply co-exist with other roles and in ways broaden the ‘old’ one. Working with digital collections opens up new tasks, for example that of the curator, that ask to be defined and delimited.
Thus, what seems to be an essential part when it comes to opening up collections for participation is the monitoring of quality, something that stands in direct correlation with the shift that has taken place from content to context. As Bertacchini and Morando refer to Rina Elster Pantalony, Chair of the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs for the International Council of Museums, a great challenge that museums nowadays face is defining their role as ‘providers of intangible goods’, and the ‘integrity, authority and contextualisation of
knowledge and information’ that comes with it (69). When opening up their online collections for collaboration with the audience, cultural institutions run the risk of the unauthorized use of their images and the production of inaccurate content, things that could both be threatening to the museums authoritative voice and cultural mission (Bertacchini and Morando 69). Partly due to the participatory expectations of modern day society, the authoritative role of the museum seems to be changing (Stein 215). Challenges that are also underlined by Aroyo and Oomen, who name the biggest two challenges of collaborating with amateurs, one: finding sufficient knowledgeable and loyal users, and two: maintaining a reasonable level of quality (147). In conclusion: with the digitisation and accessibility of art on the Internet,
contextualisation and authentication have become scarce goods (Bertacchini and Morando 69). Therefore it has become increasingly interesting to get a better grip on who, or what, takes on the curatorial role when it comes to these digital collections. To what degree does public participation with online collections take place? Or as Dekker states, the crucial question becomes: ‘What do the providers (of digital cultural heritage) actually offer, and what are the roles of both parties in that process?’ (Dekker, Culture Vortex n. pag.). I will address this question further in my case studies, but first, I will define the traditional role of the curator in more depth.
3.
Curating
As described in the previous chapters, after an increasing number of museums digitised their works, participation became a notable pillar in the interaction between users and online collections. Given the role the curator traditionally has had in the museum world, it is interesting to look into who gets to do what with these online collections: who takes up the
role of ‘the virtual curator’? In the physical, traditional museum world the roles are divided rather clear-cut: the curator makes a selection of works that together form an exhibition which the audience then gets to see. With online collections though, things are not that strict and traditional roles and boundaries seem to blur.
In order to be able to specify who is given the curatorial role in the three case studies included in this research, I will start by characterising the traditional role of the curator and what tasks this job entails. However, in my research I will not focus on the role the curator has had in the physical museum during the current period of digitisation, or how it has changed for that matter. The digitised museum world seems to not have taken, if anything added to, tasks from the ‘physical’ museum world; museums are still open for business, art is still exhibited and curators are still employed. What I want to discover: what happens to the digitised collections of museums? Who is ‘in charge’ over the works and gets to curate them?
3.1 Characterising the curator
In order to get a better grip on the ‘the curatorial role’, it is helpful to start with a
characterisation of ‘the curator’. Having a clear picture of what the curator’s role was, and is, in the physical museum world makes it possible to contrast this with the curatorial role, or lack thereof, within online art collections. Therefore I have to first start with a more general exploration of the term, before returning to the meaning of the curatorial role in the context of digitised art collections.
When defining ‘the curator’, Kate Fowle (chief curator for the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and Director-at-Large at Independent Curators International) refers to the opening paragraph of an essay written by curator and art historian Harald
Szeemann, which served as advice to a new generation of curators. Szeemann suggest the true task of the curator can be found when going back to the root of the word curate, ‘curare’, which means ‘to take care of’ (Fowle 10). The word later on evolved to mean ‘guardian’ or ‘overseer’ (Fowle 10). ‘From 1661 it began to denote one in charge of a museum, library, zoo or other place of exhibit. In each case it has hierarchical connotations – a curator is someone who presides over something – suggesting an inherent relationship between care and control’ (Fowle 10). It is the curator’s job to ‘research, acquire, document and publicly display art’, making the curator ‘the propagator of taste and knowledge for the public good’ (Fowle 12). The art museum itself largely works from an ‘epistemological perspective of art history’, meaning in practice that museums make ‘art historical narratives visible on the walls of the
museum’ (Greenhill 19). As emeritus professor of Museum Studies Eilean Hooper-Greenhill describes, the curator’s role in this process is to conduct research on the history, meaning and context of the artefacts (19). Setting up an exhibition often goes according to a fixed pattern: ‘The curator as scholar, expert on the collections and knowledgeable about the relevant discipline leads the project, chooses the objects for display and decides what to say in the text panels and labels’ (Hooper-Greenhill 17). A way of business that was seldom
challenged within the museum world and more often than not, ‘the curatorial voice was the only one to be heard’ (Hooper-Greenhill 19). As Hooper-Greenhill describes, the curator is ‘the power broker, and visitors are disempowered’ (18). Now, however, when it comes to online collections, the power seems to be given (back) to the visitors in a way, something I will further explore in my case studies.
3.2 Changing roles within the digital heritage sector
Over the course of the years, a divide arose in the museum world between open and closed institutions – giving away ‘the power’ over online collections versus safeguarding them. When adopting crowdsourcing as a tool to engage their audience, one could say that, to some degree, a part of this power is being transferred from the museum to the public, or, in the case of the Museum of Digital Arts, to something entirely different (namely an algorithm). I will discuss this in more depth in my case studies.
According to Hooper-Greenhill, the traditional field of curating has to be expanded in order to adapt to modern times, and now, with the rise of participatory digital art collections, this is the case even more so (19). Just as Hooper-Greenhill, Proctor also advocates a broader understanding of the role of the curator. She states:
I strongly believe that expertise is formed through conversations. What we are probably looking at is simply underscoring the conversation part of that skill set and extending the definition of relevant expert people beyond the curators, for example, and starting to recognize that expertise can come from a number of different
perspectives and paradigms. The expertise of the curator will henceforth be judged not just on what they know and what they themselves have done and published but also on the extent and quality of the network (Dekker, Interview n. pag.).
A viewpoint shared by Michael Edson who states that: ‘In the last epoch, we were measured by the success of our internal experts. And in this coming epoch, we are going to be measured
by the success of our networks at large: our social networks, our professional networks. People are going to be connected. Ideas will be shareable and portable’ (7). This shift in focus on more collaboration, networks and the expanding authoritative voice of the curator, together with the digitisation of art yields new ways of handling digital art. As Robert Stein, deputy director for Research, Technology and Engagement at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, describes, the development of the museum world’s participatory culture raises an important question about ‘how the changes we are witnessing will impact the role and authority of museums’ (217). With the existence of their online collections, museums seem to find themselves in a balancing act between maintaining their authority on the one hand, and developing a more democratic relationship with their audience on the other (Kelly 407). When it comes to crowdsourcing, the traditional curatorial role ends up partially in the hands of the audience, something that could potentially change the role of the museum as an
authority over their online collection.
Summarised, cultural heritage institutions are currently increasingly investing in digitising their collection and growing their online presence. In line with the rise of Web 2.0 and our participatory culture museums are changing from solely information providers to facilitators of participation, and it is becoming increasingly common to wield an open policy when it comes to online collections. However, after digitising and opening up their protocol, the question remains how institutions can engage their audience. A way to do this is via crowdsourcing. In this research, through three case studies that illustrate various degrees of participation, I contribute to this debate surrounding open online art collections by portraying ways in which open institutions can permit their audience to participate and contribute to their online collections.
4.
Case studies: Methodology
In the previous chapters, it has become clear that a lot of decisions for cultural heritage institutions are to be made after digitising their collection. It can be argued that the actual digitisation process forms merely the beginning of the transition to the online heritage world. A lot of possibilities lie in the policy the museum chooses to adhere after their collection is digitised. This policy entails the ways in which the museums attempt to engage the public with their online collection, in what ways the public gets to participate and what curatorial role this type of public participation allows. In order to identify ways in which these
developments take shape in practice, I will continue to explore three case studies of art museums that each provide different answers to these questions.
The three cases studied in this research are museums that besides having a physical point of access, the museum building itself, also have a strong online presence. All three museums have digitised all or a significantly large part of their collection and wield an open and arguably even quite progressive policy when it comes to their digital ‘property’.
The first case study that I will discuss is the Dutch Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum has a traditional collection that has been largely digitised and wields an interesting and quite unique policy when it comes to their digital collection and the public. Second, I will examine the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, another institute of which the vast majority of its collection is digital or digitised. Although in some ways similar, the Institute in its turn allows for other ways of public participation than the Rijksmuseum. Third I will discuss the Museum of Digital Art in Zürich, whose collection exists solely of born-digital art and therefore deals with an in some ways divergent policy and approach.
In all three case studies, the analysis is structured as follows: first I examine the process of ‘digitisation’, then that of ‘participation’, and last the ‘curatorial role’. Within each case study I start by looking more closely at their online policy and the openness of their collection (digitisation), then I discuss what type of public engagement the museum allows or stimulates (participation), and subsequently I examine what this means for the authoritative voice (curatorial role). In addition, I also discuss what type of audience is targeted by the museum to see if there might be any correlation there.
I have chosen to discuss three separate museums as case studies that together can be considered as three ‘gradations’ of digitisation; from traditional cultural heritage that has been digitised (the Rijksmuseum), to a mix of traditional with born-digital cultural heritage (the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision), to plenary born-digital cultural heritage (Museum of Digital Art). Each gradation offers, or requires, different approaches and
opportunities. By discussing them consecutively they together delineate an overview of what role digitisation can have when it comes to public participation and curation. To get an insight that is as complete and comprehensive as possible I will discuss the full digital policy of the museums, instead discussing, for example, just one certain exhibition or object, and look into their approach and what role they ascribe to their audience.
5.
Case Study One
- The Rijksmuseum
5.1 Digitisation: The process of digitising the Rijksmuseum’s collection
The Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum dedicated to art and history currently located in Amsterdam. Its collection consists largely of paintings and historical objects and has expanded to over 1,000,000 physical items since it first opened its doors in 1800. When it comes to museums with ‘traditional’ collections, the Rijksmuseum is oftentimes referred to as quite the pioneer in the field of digitising (Gorgels n. pag.). As Alessandro D’Amore, editor for #svegliamuseo, describes: ‘The Rijksmuseum approach to contemporaneity goes deeper to the very core of the organisation. In fact, it can be considered a landmark in the European museum environment for having fully embraced the new tools provided by the digital age’ (D’Amore n. pag.). In this case study, I will further investigate how this landmark takes shape in practice and research what new digital ways the Rijksmuseum has adopted to engage their audiences.
In 2011, the Rijksmuseum started with releasing images of public domain works on the Internet (Pekel, Democratising 4). Two years later in 2013, those same images, as well as the accompanying data, were made available in high-resolution quality and without copyright restrictions (Pekel, Democratising 4). As Joris Pekel, Community Coordinator Cultural Heritage at Europeana, describes in his case study on the Rijksmuseum, being able to show more of their collection was one of the key motivators for digitising their works
(Democratising 4). Between 2003 and 2013, the museum was being renovated and closed, leaving only 800 square metres open for the public to visit. When the building re-opened in 2013 this increased to 22,000 square metres, but still only around 8,000 objects are currently on display (Pekel, Democratising 4). To bridge this substantial gap between their extensive collection and the limited exhibition space, the Rijksmuseum started to focus on creating digital representations of their items (Pekel, Democratising 4). These efforts resulted in the museum digitising around 150,000 high-resolution images that were made available openly and freely accessible for everyone, including famous masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and van Gogh. This openness is in line with the description provided earlier on by
OpenGLAM, meaning that the Rijksmuseum allows their audience to freely ‘use, reuse and redistribute’ the digital images of their artwork, with the only exception that in some (rare) cases credit has to be given to the artist (n. pag.).
According to the museum’s marketing department, the strategic plan to digitise their collection and provide the public access to ‘their best material’ is developed with their core goal in mind: to make as many people as possible familiar with their collection, something ‘the internet can greatly facilitate’ (Pekel, Democratising 7). But how does the Rijksmuseum then engage their audience and stimulate actual participation with their online collection? To achieve this, the Rijksmuseum developed an entirely new online strategy that I will now continue to discuss in further depth.
5.2 Participation
As I have mentioned, the digitisation of collections is not a new phenomenon; a lot of museums and archives have digitised (parts of) their collections, however, the Rijksmuseum approach is noteworthy. As Peter Gorgels, manager of the Rijksmuseum’s digital
communication, describes, most museums provide content-rich, online presentations of their collections. Usually very informative, but as Gorgels states, ‘the design of the “virtual museum” often fails to rise above the level of a database, intended more for administrative purposes than for aesthetic pleasure and often lack in user-friendliness’ (n. pag). However, with the arrival of our participatory culture that I discussed earlier, the expectations of people have changed thoroughly. A trend that is also noted by Gorgels, who states that the online landscape has changed substantially over the last years and museums are expected move with the times (n. pag.). We have come from demanding ‘open content’ to now wanting options for ‘open design’. As Gorgels describes: ‘Images are not only found, collected, and published: they are also manipulated’ and then freely shared as one's own (n. pag.). A trend that the Rijksmuseum anticipated on with the launch of Rijksstudio, a concept that exists besides their regular museum website and online database that I will continue to discuss shortly. As Pronk describes, the museum wanted everybody ‘to have a little piece of Rijksmuseum in their lives’ (n. pag.). By removing ‘all barriers’, the museum is really making a connection with the ‘global audience of today’, and in this way, the Rijksmuseum has managed to build
relationships with people who might not even have been to the museum (n. pag.). With this approach, the museum focussed on the vision of the people that are ‘living digital lives in a
