Linked Art II: Developing Community, Practice, and Scholarship
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Engineering Science
Abstract
'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.
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.
Planned Impact
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.
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.
Publications
Raemy, Julien Antoine
(2023)
Enabling Participatory Data Perspectives for Image Archives through a Linked Art Workflow
Description | Linked Art II explored the practical routes by which benefits of using the Linked Art standard might be better understood and adopted by cultural institutions and scholars using those collections. Following introductory and explanatory outreach during the initial phase of the project, we developed software 'workflows' to help others convert their data into the Linked Art format, and create visualisations to then explore this data. These software workflows are freely available as open source software for others to use, adapt, and extend. We demonstrated our workflow software through online webinars and, post-pandemic, at in-person workshops. The project then undertook a 'community call' through an online questionnaire, asking museum practitioners and scholarly users for feedback on our software workflows, and seeking community suggestions which could further the use of Linked Art in respondents' own institutions and projects. These community interactions and discussions led to two specific collaborations through which the project exemplified the benefits of Linked Art: the first working with the Swiss Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives (PIA) to create an extended and customisable workflow to interface with their systems and data; and the second developed a sustainable and easy-to-deploy exhibition browser for small and independent organisations, co-created with staff from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) through the lens of 'alternative spaces' exhibitions. |
Exploitation Route | All the software outputs of the project, including our Linked Art transformation workflows, are open source and freely available for re-use and extension. The Exhibition Browser tool provides an extensible exemplar of software which can create simple, web-based, public-facing interfaces for Linked Art data which could be deployed by small and independent organisations, without the need for expensive or complex website infrastructure. |
Sectors | Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
Description | In the second phase of Linked Art II, project findings were applied to co-develop data-driven solutions for the cultural heritage sector through two exemplars: the first working with the Swiss Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives (PIA) to create an extended and customisable workflow to interface with their systems and data; and the second developed a sustainable and easy-to-deploy exhibition browser for small and independent organisations, co-created with staff from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) through the lens of 'alternative spaces' exhibitions. |
First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
Sector | Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
Impact Types | Cultural |
Description | Collaborative Doctoral Partnership - Novel application of computational approaches in addressing problematic terminology and descriptions within V&A Museum catalogues |
Amount | £93,414 (GBP) |
Funding ID | AH/X004775/1 (2784579) |
Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 01/2023 |
End | 09/2026 |
Description | Linked Art II collaboration with Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) |
Organisation | Museum of Modern Art |
Country | United States |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | Drawing upon work of the Linked Art II, the project established a collaboration with the Jonathan Lill, Head of Metadata and Systems at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York) Library, Archives, and Research Collections. Working with Jonathan, the Oxford team developed a web-based interface for browsing the 'alternative spaces' exhibitions dataset Jonathan maintains, building upon it's conversion to Linked Art. |
Collaborator Contribution | Jonathan Lill (Head of Metadata and Systems at the Museum of Modern Art Library, Archives, and Research Collections) has long maintained a digital catalogue of 'alternative spaces', a series of exhibitions over many decade held in 'non-traditional' venues (and thereby without an organisational structure to documents and published a record of the exhibitions). Jonathan provided this dataset to the research team, and worked with us to create an 'exhibition browser' tool which can be adapted to intuitively present the asymmetric 'shape' of this data, through a workflow which can be deployed an sustained without requiring the resources of a major institution. |
Impact | The Exhibition Browser software developed in the collaboration (i) provides an interface for accessing and exploring the otherwise unavailable dataset on 'alternative spaces' art exhibitions; (ii) has created a workflow which allows a curator to use their familiarity and knowledge of exhibitions to configure the software such that everyday users can better explore and understand the exhibitions; (ii) created software specifically designed to have low deployment requirements and low sustainability costs, generating a website requiring only basic ('static') web server technologies and thus suitable for use by small organisations and ad-hoc collectives. |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | Linked Art II collaboration with Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives (PIA) |
Organisation | University of Basel |
Country | Switzerland |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | Drawing upon work of the Linked Art II, the project established a collaboration with the Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives (PIA) project through Julien A. Raemy at the University of Basel. Working together, the collaboration developed a software workflow for generating Linked Art data from PIA archives. |
Collaborator Contribution | The PIA project connects the world of data and things in an interdisciplinary manner. PIA explores the phases of the analogue and digital archive from the perspectives of cultural anthropology, technology and design. Using three collections of the photo archive of the Swiss Society for Folklore Studies (SSFS) as examples, PIA are developing interfaces that enable the collaborative indexing and use of archival materials. The interfaces, respectively the graphical user interface and the application programming interfaces (APIs), provide tools and visual interfaces for the collaborative production and visualisation of knowledge with the aim of enabling a reflective and intuitive experience. In this collaboration PIA member Julien A. Raemy worked with the Linked Art II team to extend their APIs through a software workflow for generating Linked Art. |
Impact | The collaboration has informed PIA's plans for APIs which publish Linked Art, establishing a basis for connecting their data with other collections; publicly available open source forward implementing the workflow; and a joint poster at the Digital Humanities conference. |
Start Year | 2022 |
Description | LinkedMusic project collaboration |
Organisation | McGill University |
Country | Canada |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | The principal investigator and a research team member are invited collaborators with the Canadian SSHRC-funded 'LinkedMusic' project, based at McGill University, where they contribute their accumulated expertise in digital music information systems and their application to digital musicology. |
Collaborator Contribution | The goal of the LinkedMusic Partnership is to link music databases through metadata schemas: structures for organizing information stored in a database. This will go a long way towards bringing online music search to the same level of sophistication currently possible for text-based resources, allowing us to answer fundamental questions about music and how it interacts with human creativity, society, culture, and history. |
Impact | - |
Start Year | 2022 |
Title | Linked Art Exhibition Browser |
Description | The Linked Art Exhibition Browser is an application that creates a web-based Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Cultural Heritage exhibitions expressed as Linked Art JSON-LD. The Linked Art Exhibition Browser allows you to: view a locally-hosted dynamic web-based view on exhibition data; create a static HTML version of the website that can be hosted without the need for server-side dynamic coding. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been defined further to a data analysis exercise using a Linked Art data analysis app, looking at the 'shape' of the data, that is the distribution of values for certain data properties. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The Linked Art Exhibition Browser was deployed in a demonstrator developed in collaboration with colleagues from the New York Museum of Modern Art. |
URL | https://github.com/tgra/Linked-Art-Exhibition-Browser |
Title | Linked Art Jupyter Notebooks |
Description | A collection of Jupyter notebooks developed during the Linked Art II project, which provide a step-by-step workflow for transforming collections data into Linked Art, followed by incorporation into different visualisations. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | The workflows were used as a dissemination and teaching aid during online webinars at in-person workshops (at DHOxSS and elsewhere); and subsequently as the basis for collaborations with the PIA project and for the 'alternative spaces' exhibition browser (in collaboration with MoMA staff). |
Title | Linked Art collections transformation workflow |
Description | A workflow for transforming Cultural Heritage collections data to Linked Art. The workflow includes reusable elements so that it can be repurposed with a different data source and/or different data model entities. The Python code makes use of jsonnet code templates and cromulent Python library, and transforms three types of photographic entity to their corresponding representation in Linked Art. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | This workflow was used to realise the project collaboration with the Participatory Knowledge Practices in Analogue and Digital Image Archives (PIA) and subsequent joint demonstrations and publications. |
URL | https://github.com/tgra/Linked-Art-Collection-Data-Workflow |
Description | Connecting cultural heritage collections data with Linked Art |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Kevin Page and Tanya Gray presented the outcomes of Linked Art II at the Linked Data strand of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School, including a hands-on practical workshop during which attendees were guided in learning how to use the software workflows for creating and manipulating Linked Art data which were developed in the project. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/digital-humanities-oxford-summer-school |
Description | Guest lecture to Oxford Brookes University Faculty of Humanities doctoral training programme |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Kevin Page gave the talk 'An interdisciplinary perspective on Digital Humanities' to the humanities doctoral training programme at Oxford Brookes University. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Linked Art Editorial Board |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | 25 international cultural institutions and Universities are represented on the Linked Art Editorial Board, working to standardise the Linked Art profile for sharing Linked Open Data describing Art. The Editorial Board meets fortnightly by teleconference, and biannually at face-to-face meetings. A first version of the profile is expected to be completed by Spring 2021. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020,2021,2022,2023,2024 |
URL | https://linked.art/ |
Description | Linked Art Online Community Call |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | The Linked Art II project ran an online questionnaire to requesting views on the use and adoption of Linked Art (current and future), and prompting for opportunities and challenges respondents foresaw. We we solicited feedback from all those who create, support, or do research using art collections data. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://linked.art/community/projects/linkedartii/questionnaire/ |
Description | Linked Art at the CIDOC 2020 conference |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Linked Art organised and ran a series of events at the CIDOC 2020 conference in December 2020, featuring speakers from the Linked Art II project partners and Linked Art community. These events included an introductory workshop, a panel, and live encodings of collections data (including audience 'bring your own data') as part of the project's outreach activities to practitioners working in cultural institutions. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
URL | https://linked.art/community/events/2020/cidoc |
Description | Linked Art briefing for NFDI4Culture |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Kevin Page and Rob Sanderson briefed the NFDI4Culture project on progress and plans for Linked Art within and in support of research infrastructures in the Arts and Humanities, and discussed the possibilities for future collaboration. NFDI4Culture is to establish a demand-oriented infrastructure for research data on tangible and intangible cultural assets within the overall structure of the German Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur (NFDI). |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Linked Art panel at the Digital Humanities 2020 conference |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | The Linked Art II project organised and ran a panel event, including speakers from the Linked Art II project partners and community, as part of our outreach to the digital humanities community. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
Description | Linked Art sectoral engagement at Rijksmuseum |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | Project members contributed to delivery of a Linked Art workshop hosted by the Rijksmuseum in October 2023, attended by representative of the host institution and art museums and associated cultural institutes, primarily from the Netherlands but also adjoining European countries. An introduction for Linked Art was presented alongside examples of its use, including those from the project; discussion was focussed on use and adoption by the represented institutions. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Panel at Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School - Data standards in the Digital Humanities |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Kevin Page and Tanya Gray were panellists on the topic of 'Data standards in the Digital Humanities' within the Linked Data strand at the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://digitalscholarship.web.ox.ac.uk/digital-humanities-oxford-summer-school |
Description | Participation in Museum Data Service researcher workshop |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | A project member was invited to participate in a requirements gathering workshop run by the Museum Data Service, giving input into the design and potential use and utility of the future service. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
Description | Webinar: Linked Art in Practice using Jupyter Code Notebooks - Connecting Cultural Heritage Collections Data |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Industry/Business |
Results and Impact | In this webinar, the Linked Art II project guided attendees (53 international registrations) through a practical exploration of transforming, reconciling, and visualising Linked Art, using real-world data from museums and galleries worldwide. These were be demonstrated using 'code notebooks' developed during the Linked Art II project and implemented in Jupyter. The notebooks provide step-by-step illustration and explanation, and can provide a foundation for further customisation. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
URL | https://linked.art/community/projects/linkedartii/webinar/ |
Description | Workshop on Uncertainty and Subjectivity in Provenance Linked Open Data |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Kevin Page was invited to participate in this workshop on Uncertainty and Subjectivity in Provenance Linked Open Data, hosted by Leuphana University, where he shared experience of applying Linked Art in research projects. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |