Helen Lessick

WRAP Your Public Art Assets: Managing Projects, Managing Data – Part 2

Posted by Helen Lessick, Apr 15, 2011 0 comments


Helen Lessick

Helen Lessick

There are three reasons public art file searches are performed: Cultural Tourism, Community Practice, and Critical Assessment.

1. Cultural Tourism: Where is the artwork (GPS/location info), what is it (art work title sometimes is what is being searched), who made it (artist’s name), and what does it look like (a clear image of piece as experienced by the viewer)?

2. Community Practice: How the community achieves the project, a lessons-learned toolkit, documenting what was done, who did it, and how. This type of material includes artist selection, proposal, contacts, contracts, maintenance report, community engagement, and fabrication records.

3. Critical Assessment: These are materials generated outside the work of the artist and any commissioning agency. They may include critical writing mentioning the project, press releases, art dedication, and project description. Currently, art administration educators and their TAs are building courses about our practice. Art critics and bloggers are writing about stuff in public. Professional media outlets seem to shout the loudest, and turn up first in online searches.  

Solution: Manage Your Data as you manage your project

Collections and projects are published online to be found. Artists hope their projects are noticed by art consultants and curators, architects, and critics. If a writer does notice the work, we want them to find accurate information and not regurgitate bad information.

Administrators publish their collections to get their municipality noticed – building and changing the municipality one public art project at a time. We hope our supervisors, elected officials, and voting public take note at budget time too. The time is now to get the work out there.

The ‘how’ is for a longer article, but the why is very clear.

Public art must make its case accurately, vocally, and online.

Everything we need is out there. We must only connect.

I suggest connecting first with a local visual resource professional and art librarian at a public university or public library. Is it time for your organization to have a Librarian in Residence?

Quick tip:

If you download or exchange any music you know that the songs online are usually MP3 files. Each file contains the artist’s name, title of song, and producer as well as the song itself as embedded data. It is sent with the song data when you forward it (legally!) to devices or friends.

You may not be aware that photo files, raw from camera and edit, can hold the same kind of information right in the file. But you have to enter it in the data fields, and treat your data with the same respect you treat printed photos and original art.

Go into your image then select ‘Edit file info.’

You can do this for individual shots in programs including Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, or batch tag assets through Graphic Converter or a similar program that came with your digital camera.

Resist just dumping files from your digital camera into a folder.

Project managers, collection managers and artists can do this for individual works.

Your art, your administrative career, your legacy and your copyright may depend on it.

Note: Helen Lessick will be discussing WRAP at the Public Art Preconference breakfast roundtables. Check out Part 1 of Helen's post here.

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