Linked Art II: Developing Community, Practice, and Scholarship

'Linked Art II: Developing Community, Practice, and Scholarship' brings together University researchers with experts from some of the leading art museums in the UK and US. The project will engage with scholars and practitioners to highlight the opportunities afforded by connected collections as data, and establish where new digital methods and tools are needed to enable novel research. Linked Art II will engage with cultural institutions to examine how structured data can contribute towards digital challenges, including improving the accessibility of collections, and increasing the range and diversity of institutions and material available to the public.

The foundation of the project is the development and application of Linked Data to cultural heritage collections, with an emphasis on works of art and their provenance. Linked Data will provide a platform for multi-modal digital scholarship across these rich collections; Linked Art II will continue a partnership setting an international agenda to realise this platform through a common data model, building capacity for future collaborative implementations and research investigations.

In the first phase of this work, a research network was formed to bring together experts who are collaborating on the design of the common data model. The Linked Art II project continues this work, but also seeks to trial and test the model through a series of feasibility studies and proof of concept implementations.

These 'exemplars' will be developed in collaboration with project partners and the wider Linked Art community; two exemplars will be selected via an open call for collaboration. The project will publish documentation and explanation of the exemplars on the Linked Art website so that others can understand and learn about the practicalities of Linked Art adoption.

The project is led by the University of Oxford and the J. Paul Getty Trust, with project partners from the UK and US including: the American Numismatic Society, the National Gallery (London), the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), Newfields, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of the Arts London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Yale Center for British Art.

The project will advocate Linked Art adoption amongst the cultural heritage community in the UK and US through a series of outreach workshops, disseminating discussion points and conclusions from the network in easily understood and readily available forms, and enabling the wider sector to benefit from the transformative step-change offered by Linked Art as it evolves.

Linked Art II will explore the development and application of Linked Data to cultural heritage collections, with an emphasis on works of art and their provenance. Through its Engagement Fund and development of a series of Exemplars, the project will foster ongoing collaboration between researchers and world-leading art museums in the UK and US, with a focus on developing community, practice, and scholarship.

The project will have a direct and immediate impact on cultural institutions who are project partners: the J. Paul Getty Trust, the American Numismatic Society, the American Numismatic Society, the National Gallery (London), the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), Newfields, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. In their letters of support these partners indicate the positive contribution the project and Linked Art will make to their institutional plans and missions as they address the challenges of the digital.

Through a Scholarly Outreach Workshop, the project will engage with academics as users of the future model, investigating how Linked Art tools can assist digital scholarship, identifying and developing the strengths of the model to meet the needs of researchers, and advancing interdisciplinary methods to take advantage of Linked Data resources.

Through two Community Outreach Workshops, the project will advocate the benefits of Linked Art adoption amongst the cultural heritage community in the UK and US, disseminating discussion points and conclusions from the project in easily understood and readily available forms, and enabling the wider sector to benefit from the transformative step-change offered by Linked Art as it evolves.

In due course the completed Linked Art model will benefit the whole sector of art museums and galleries, through the improved discoverability of any single museum's collection, given improved means to cross-link between collections sharing common data structures via Linked Art standards. This discoverability will extend to automated retrieval and processing by assistive algorithms, opening collections to new approaches of digital scholarship, thereby increasing awareness and understanding of collection content.

The wider art museum and cultural heritage sector will also benefit from the leadership and advocacy activities undertaken by the project, building knowledge, experience and innovation capacity in the UK and US. The project will engage with sector bodies such as the American Art Collective, PHAROS consortium, and UK University Museums Group. Linked Art will be incorporated into material delivered at the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, which is attended by a range of industry professionals and practitioners.