DIGITAL DEMOCRATIZATION OF

ART

Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries

Freer|SacklerThe Smithsonian Institution has two museums of Asian art: the

Freer Gallery of Art, which opened to the public in 1923, and the

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which welcomed its first visitors in

1987. Both are physically connected by an underground

passageway and ideologically linked through the study, exhibition,

and sheer love of Asian art.

Image: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Art

DEMOCRATIZATION OF ART?

Public Access + Digital Collections

Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

Democratization of Art “To be public these days is to be on the Internet. Therefore to be a public museum your digital data should be free.” 

Walters Art Museum curator William Noel

• Viewable anywhere a digital visitor has internet– Available 24/7

– Minimize physical and financial contstraints

• Objects on a level playing field– Photograph everything, from Whistler’s Peacock Room to the

tiniest unnamed ceramic sherd

• Quality Representation– Images at high resolutions

– Ability to zoom and download

– More metadata

What does it mean to Democratize Art?

40.4% of the World’s Population has Internet

25.6% - 5 years ago

14.1% - 10 years ago

5% of the World’s Population has flown on a plane

*Internet Includes Internet at home, via computer or mobile device. http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/

*Statistics on the number of people worldwide who have flown on a plane vary from 2%-5%

Digital = Democratization?

Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

Digital Collections ConnoisseursQuestions Freer and Sackler Galleries are striving to

answer:

• Who is the digital visitor?

• Are we open to visitors who are

different from those we expect in our

physical museum?

• How do you cater to this new digital,

global visitor?

Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

Museums going DigitalRijksmuseum, Netherlands

British Museum, Britain

Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Victoria and Albert Museum, Britain

Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

Freer and Sackler Galleries, Washington, DC…

Digital Collection PoliciesMore large museums have digital policies in place than

small and medium museums. Less than 34% have policies

related to specific topic areas:

access (23.4)

digital format (21.5%)

materials not digitized (21.4%)

preservation (19.4%)

security (19.3%).

metadata (7.3% of museums)

conversion of digital files to

next-generation formats (7.6%)

evaluation (8.6%)

Status of Technology and Digitization in the Nation’s Museums and Libraries -

January 2006

Digital Fears & Concerns“If they want to have a Vermeer on their toilet paper, I’d rather have a very high-quality image of Vermeer on toilet paper than a very bad reproduction.”

Taco Dibbits, director of collections, Rijksmuseum

Looking at 22 arts and cultural organizations, experts from across the field noted that institutions are struggling to embrace the new realities of audience behavior via the web, mobile devices, social media, etc.

Let’s Get Real 2 report by Culture24 Action Research Project

Image: Milk with Van Gogh Painting – from the Rijksmuseum online collection

Your open digital

Virtual Collections

Bring visitors to your

Real Museum

Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

DIGITIZING THE FREER|SACKLER

Process, Pitfalls and Payoffs of being the First SI Museum

Image: Russo-Japanese War by Toyohara Chikanobu, 1838-1912

Staffing Open F|S2 Studios

5 Cameras

3 Photographers

2 Digital Imaging & Asset Specialists

1 Rights and Reproduction Specialist3 Art Handlers

3 Archivists

3 Registrants

11 Interns

29 Curators

2 Web Developers

1 Videographer

1 Designer

1 Digital Editor

1 Dedicated PR Rep

1 Project Manager

1 F|S Chief Digital Officer

1 Smithsonian Institution

Image: F|S Digital Media and Technology Department

Equipment + SoftwareDigital Assets Management System (DAMS)

The Museum System (TMS)

Collections DAMS Interface System (CDIS)

High resolution 80mp digital camera backs

Phase One cameras

Capture One software

Image: Dr. Julian Raby, director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, reviewing last object photographed.

Capture ProcessPhase 1

• Survey ENTIRE collection

• Divide collection into like objects (size, weight, material)

• Create shoot lists

• Plan object handling with art handlers

• Photograph ALL THE THINGS!

• Tag, ingest, repeat.

Phase 2

• Survey ENTIRE collection (again!)

• Create MORE lists

• Find ALL THE THINGS

• More object handling with art handlers

• If in doubt, Photograph Again!

• Tag, ingest, repeat.

Image: Photographer Neil Greentree by Hutomo Wicaksono, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian

Photographing “Problem Children”

Shooting long scrolls, one of our photographers worked with an

art handler to unroll and shoot the object one piece at a time.

These images were then stitched together to create a high-

resolution image of the entire scroll.

Large objects like

sculptures were shot in

situ and then the

background was

dropped out to a neutral

white.

Smithsonian + Freer|Sackler

Unit Websites (Open F|S)

Collections Search

Mobile Apps

TranscriptionCenter

Digitized Information Enabling Access Public Access

Enterprise Digital

Asset Network

(EDAN)

Search

Metadata

Images

Web

ServicesDigital AssetManagement

System (DAMS)

Collections

Systems

CDIS

Functionality – Phase 1• Every object has a record, every record has an image

• TMS linked to DAMS via CDIS

• Expanded EDAN services

– More metadata

– Object specific image delivery (thumbnail and hi-res)

– Full text search (from title to notes)

• Faceted search using TMS taxonomies

• Zoom + Scroll capabilities

• Download button

• Full size images

Rapid Capture Pilot ProjectIn May 2014, F|S hosted the 4th RCPP led by the Smithsonian’s

Digitization Program Office. This effort, designed to digitize vast

numbers of collection items quickly and efficiently, focused on

the Freer Study Collection (created in 1923). This was the first

time digital images of this collection were made available of this

collection.

Image: RCPP by Hutomo Wicaksono

RCPP Lessons Learned• Stress testing everything from naming

conventions to DAMS integration

• Identified better ways of moving metadata from

TMS to DAMS

• Rapid, LIVE prototyping process

OPEN F|S

Branding the Online Collections

Image: Various Digital Wallpapers created for OpenFS Launch

What is Open F|S?

search + download + create

We’ve digitized our entire collection and we’re making it

available to the public. That’s thousands of works now

ready for you to download, modify, and share.

Launch Package Overview• Media preview (SI + FS Public Affairs)

• Infographic

• Real Stickers + Digital Wallpaper!

• Branded headers for all social media

• Weekly object highlight in blog (Friday Fave)

• Detailed press plan

– TV, Social Media, Print

Image Stickers created for OpenFS launch

OpenFS Stickers

US PressForbes Life

Education Week

Popular Archeology

Washington Post

Home Accents Today

ArtInfo

AP

New York Times

The Art Newspaper

WAMU ArtBeat

GW Hatchet

Washingtonian

FedScoop

Fed News Radio

Voice of America

Kojo Nnamdi Show

Washington City Paper

4.8 Tweets Per Day

Tweets Sent by

@freersackler96

Tweets Sent by

@freersackler96

1,482

Unique People

2,279

Total Engagement

15,372,215

Potential Reach

28,647,569

Potential Impressions

1,482

Unique People

People that engaged with you on Twitter

2,279

Total Engagement

Organic mentions, @Replies, Retweets, and Favorites

15,372,215

Potential Reach

Combined followers of people tweeting about your brand (1/1/15 to 1/20/15)

28,647,569

Potential Impressions

Potential times served in all followers' feeds +380

Change in Followers

1,128

Bitly Clicks

+380

Change in Followers

1,128

Bitly Clicks

What happened?

How many uniquepeople engaged with your account?

How many times did these people engage?

How many people could have seen theseTweets?

How many impressions could have been generated?

What started it?

Avg. Followers Per Person Engaging Impressions Per Person

Reached

Engagements Per Person

1.510,373

1.9

Megaphone: Twitter engagement for the first 20 days of OpenFS campaign, analyzed by Simply Measured

Twitter Engagement

Site EngagementFirst Week

1,222% Visitor Increase overall

Monday 12/29 (17,500 views) vs Monday 1/5 (231,400 views)

January Open F|S

590,000 views of open.asia.si.edu

19,300 views of wallpaper

10,996 views of Nude with Black Cat

January Requests for FS images

~8.5 million requests

~1.5 million requests for full size images.

~17,000 unique ip addresses

Image: Nude with Black Cat by Takahashi Shotei, 1870 - 1945, Fusui-gabo

DIGITAL ZERO

The Future of Open F|S

Image: Maitreya, the Future Buddha, Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911), Mongolia, Alice S. Kandell Collection,

New Audiences

New Collections

New Exhibitions

What is Digital Zero?Digital Zero means reaching the zero-line of our online collections - where we are at the lowest no- negative point in our digital history.

We are no longer frantically digitizing disparate collections, creating silos of content. We have created a foundation where every object in our collection is represented digitally.

Digital Zero gives us the freedom to begin the rapid prototyping of digital offerings and focus on how our visitors want to interact with our collection.

We have removed the backlog, created a plan for the future, and can focus on the now.

Digital Zero to Sixty • Future of Open F|S

– Online Catalogs

– API

– Image annotations

– User created tags

– Visitor comments

• Crowdsourcing

– Hackathons

– Creative uses of Open F|S

– Github sharing

• App Integration

• Full site integration

Image: Cat with lantern; by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1847-1915, Matsuki Heikichi

Beta Users“Can I download the entire collection?”

“Do you have an API or JSON file I can use?”

We want your feedback on Open F|S! We are looking for

your observations and suggestions as we continue to

define Open F|S. We will send you exclusive hackathon

invitations, closed test versions of future iterations, and

other forms of gratitude. Help shape Open F|S!

asia.si.edu/collections/beta

Image: Group of five miniature bronze objects found together in Timna' Cemetery, Tomb 10: ladle, pan, bucket, funnel, bowl on tripod stand

DIGITAL DEMOCRATIZATION OF

ART

Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries

Courtney OCallaghan

Chief Digital Officer

ocallaghanc@si.edu

Image: Folio from a Divan (collected poems) by Hafiz (d. 1390); recto: text, Poem of wisdom of love, beauty, and celebration of time; verso: illustration and text, Feast of 'id

OPEN.ASIA.SI.EDU