Presentation for the collaboration panel at AAM, May 2, 2012. Liz Neely

1. Case study in Collaboration:
Developing the Online Scholarly
Catalogue Project
Liz Neely, Art Institute of Chicago
@lili_czarina
May 2nd
AAM2012, Minneapolis

2. Initiated by the Getty Foundation
“The five-year initiative hopes to
demonstrate that when art
museums collaborate on innovative
models for online scholarly
catalogues, they will dramatically
increase access to their
collections, make available
new, interdisciplinary research, and
potentially revolutionize how
object–based research is
performed and utilized.”
-Getty Web site (consulted 5/1/2012)

3. OSCI PARTICIPANTS
Brought together by the Getty
The Art Institute of Freer Gallery of Art and Los Angeles County
Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Museum of Art
Monet and Renoir Premodern Japanese Southeast Asian sculpture
paintings and drawings illustrated books
National Gallery of San Francisco Museum of Seattle Art Museum
Art, Washington, D.C. Modern Art
Dutch Paintings of the 17th Robert Rauschenberg works Chinese paintings
Century and calligraphy
Tate Britain Walker Art Center J. Paul Getty Museum
(participant, not a grantee)
Camden Town Group Recent acquisitions of Paintings acquired in the last
paintings & drawings contemporary art 10 years

4. DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS/PROJECTS
[encyclopedic]
The Art Institute of Freer Gallery of Art and Los Angeles County
Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Museum of Art
Monet and Renoir Premodern Japanese Southeast Asian sculpture
paintings and drawings illustrated books
National Gallery of San Francisco Museum of Seattle Art Museum
Art, Washington, D.C. Modern Art
Dutch Paintings of the 17th Robert Rauschenberg works Chinese paintings
Century and calligraphy
Tate Britain Walker Art Center J. Paul Getty Museum
(participant, not a grantee)
Camden Town Group Recent acquisitions of Paintings acquired in the last
paintings & drawings contemporary art 10 years

5. DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS/PROJECTS
[modern/contemporary]
The Art Institute of Freer Gallery of Art and Los Angeles County
Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Museum of Art
Monet and Renoir Premodern Japanese Southeast Asian sculpture
paintings and drawings illustrated books
National Gallery of San Francisco Museum of Seattle Art Museum
Art, Washington, D.C. Modern Art
Dutch Paintings of the 17th Robert Rauschenberg works Chinese paintings
Century and calligraphy
Tate Britain Walker Art Center J. Paul Getty Museum
(participant, not a grantee)
Camden Town Group Recent acquisitions of Paintings acquired in the last
paintings & drawings contemporary art 10 years

6. DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS/PROJECTS
[non-western art project]
The Art Institute of Freer Gallery of Art and Los Angeles County
Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Museum of Art
Monet and Renoir Premodern Japanese Southeast Asian sculpture
paintings and drawings illustrated books
National Gallery of San Francisco Museum of Seattle Art Museum
Art, Washington, D.C. Modern Art
Dutch Paintings of the 17th Robert Rauschenberg works Chinese paintings
Century and calligraphy
Tate Britain Walker Art Center J. Paul Getty Museum
(participant, not a grantee)
Camden Town Group Recent acquisitions of Paintings acquired in the last
paintings & drawings contemporary art 10 years

7. DIFFERENT INSTITUTIONS/PROJECTS
[paintings and drawings]
The Art Institute of Freer Gallery of Art and Los Angeles County
Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Museum of Art
Monet and Renoir Premodern Japanese Southeast Asian sculpture
paintings and drawings illustrated books
National Gallery of San Francisco Museum of Seattle Art Museum
Art, Washington, D.C. Modern Art
Dutch Paintings of the 17th Robert Rauschenberg works Chinese paintings
Century and calligraphy
Tate Britain Walker Art Center J. Paul Getty Museum
(participant, not a grantee)
Camden Town Group Recent acquisitions of Paintings acquired in the last
paintings & drawings contemporary art 10 years

8. OSCI PARTICIPANTS
The Art Institute of Freer Gallery of Art and Los Angeles County
Chicago Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Museum of Art
Monet and Renoir Premodern Japanese Southeast Asian sculpture
paintings and drawings illustrated books
National Gallery of San Francisco Museum of Seattle Art Museum
Art, Washington, D.C. Modern Art
Dutch Paintings of the 17th Robert Rauschenberg works Chinese paintings
Century and calligraphy
Tate Britain Walker Art Center J. Paul Getty Museum
(participant, not a grantee)
Camden Town Group Recent acquisitions of Paintings acquired in the last
paintings & drawings contemporary art 10 years

9. Defining and Tackling the Issue
Each institution approached their own
projects. The Getty physically brought
representatives back together at various
stages to share problems, results and
brainstorm solutions.

10. KEY: Different Models of Collaboration
There are a lot of different ways to
collaborate—it’s not always about people
working together on the same project. In
this case it’s people working together to
think through common issues on similar
projects.

11. KEY: Different Models of Collaboration
• Built a community around the project
• Participating museums could discuss issues
not immediately facing their project, but
which they may face in future projects
• Test ones own assumptions in the face of
different solutions

12. Paintings and Drawings by the
Impressionist Circle in the Collection of the
Art Institute of Chicago

13. AIC TEAM
Curatorial Conservation Publications
Ryerson and Burnham Libraries
Technology
Legal Imaging

14. The Art Institute OSCI Project
• Highly collaborative cross-
departmental, including a senior-level
professional staff internally
• Needed to work with a development team
open to working with this team to build out
our evolving ‘vision’
• Built high level requirements, but needed help
in realization

15. Developing the Catalogue
Art Institute engaged the IMA Lab to
develop an innovative open-source
interface for the OSCI catalogue.

16. KEY: Everyone brings something to the
table
• Senior curatorial, conservation, publications and
technology staff with their extraordinary
experience and expertise in scholarly research
and collection information
• Dedication and commitment to producing and
uncompromising beautiful and useful catalogue
platform

17. KEY: Everyone brings something to the
table
• Visionary technology staff understanding of
collections publishing details and able to translate
the AIC requirements and aspirations into a
technical reality
• Commitment to building tools that enhance the
museum community

18. Outcomes
Highly collaborative, iterative, successful

19. Outcomes
• The Art Institute catalogue vision comes to life in
an online scholarly publishing platform.
– Software launched as open source.
• The IMA receives a grant from the Getty
Foundation to further extend for other OSCI
museums.
– OSCI Toolkit:www.oscitoolkit.org
• The museum community, through the Getty
Project, has a more sophisticated knowledge and
ongoing dialogue about digital scholarly
publishing.

20. KEY: Defined Outcomes for Success
It’s only a success if you got out of
it what you needed and what you
expected… and hopefully more!

21. Other benefits
• Professional development extended beyond
your own institution
• Leads to more collaborations – AIC working
with the IMA Lab on a custom TAP/TourML
tool
• Collective expertise to effectively advance our
knowledge base
• Fun!

22. The “I” word..
Innovation though Collaboration

23. Thank you!
Liz Neely
Twitter: @lili_czarina
Director of Digital Information and Access
Art Institute of Chicago