Comments on: Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

By: Deborah Wythe

Deborah Wythe — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:45:02 +0000

A really wonderful side benefit is that the full text of the press releases is being picked up by the search engine. So, for example, if you search the name of an artist who is mentioned in the press release (try “Webster”), you’ll find your way to the exhibition. We eventually hope to bring exhibition checklist information into Collection on the Web from our background databases, but this will provide yet another view into the collection.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:16:33 +0000

These are quite wonderful – gives you a good sense of what the museum thought important about the exhibitions it was doing. Next step: put the scripts of exhibits online, too!

Thanks for the information, and for posting this archival material.

Steve

By: Erin Sweeney

Erin Sweeney — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:01:42 +0000

Hi Steve, I'm Erin, the person working on the press releases project, and Shelley has it right, the project is mammoth. I can't wait to finally get it all online. Here's two examples that are currently live: Metcalf Loan Collection of Rugs [1927] and Brooklyn Society of Etchers: Annual Exhibition [14th] [1929]. Eventually the exhibition press releases online will span 1925 to present day. This is especially valuable for those exhibitions, like the ones I linked, for which we cannot find any photography.

By: Shelley Bernstein

Shelley Bernstein — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:07:20 +0000

Hi Steve,

Thanks for writing. We are in the middle of a mammoth project to scan and OCR all the press releases and get them into the Exhibition database to help give visitors some contextual info. The nice thing is, we will not only have the searchable OCR’d text, but also the scans of the original pages will be up for viewing which is pretty cool. This project is taking a while for us to complete, so I’d guess you would see this type of information come spring. There are a few examples now on the live site, so I’ll see if Erin Sweeney (she’s working on the project) will comment with a few examples so you can see a preview.

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:55:38 +0000

Great to see exhibition photos available. Hard to sort them out, though – is there more archival information available, say, the main labels, or press releases, to help make sense of them? Any way to link them together?