DFW Museums Join Smithsonian to Create American Art Database

by Paula Newton February 4, 2015
Charles M. Russell (1864–1926) Charlie Himself, ca. 1915 Wax, cloth, plaster, metal, string, and paint Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX

Charles M. Russell (1864–1926)
Charlie Himself, ca. 1915
Wax, cloth, plaster, metal, string, and paint
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is heading a group of 14 museums across the country, The American Art Collaborative (AAC), to build a new humongous online art database, after receiving funds from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation. The museums participating in the AAC are meant to represent some of the most important collections of American art in the world and two of those museums are the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Dallas Museum of Art.

Members of the AAC are meeting in Washington, D.C. this week to plan the implementation of their Linked Open Data Initiative, which seeks to expand the possibilities inherent in linking museum collections through Linked Open Data (LOD). According to ArtfixDaily.com:

The Collaborative plans to create a diverse critical mass of LOD on the Web on the subject of American art by putting the collections of the participating museums in the cloud and tagging this data as LOD. This will exponentially enhance the accessing, linking and sharing of information about American art in a way that transcends what is currently possible with structured data.

“Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate the power of Linked Open Data to the museum world and to the study of American art, history and culture in order to inspire more museums to follow suit and to continue to build on the possibilities presented by the Web,” said Betsy Broun, Director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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