Unlocking the Digital Canvas
Find out how the Art Gallery of Hamilton expanded access to its collections with Digital Asset Management.
Key Figures & Objectives
50%
Museum Objects Digitized
9,252
Image Assets
10,379
Physical Object Records
Organisation
Art Gallery of Hamilton
Headquarters
Ontario, Canada
Lead, Collections
Christine Braun
Archivist & Arts Administrator
Andrea Howard
The Art Of Southwest Ontario’s Biggest Museum
The Art Gallery of Hamilton began in 1914 as a small gallery displaying just 33 works. Since then, it has grown to become the largest museum in Southwest Ontario, with one of the finest collections in all of Canada.
The museum features important works from Canadian and international artists, including Alex Colville, Keith Haring, and Gustave Doré. Works include paintings, photography, installations, video, new media, and the contents of an impressive sculpture garden.
Overseeing these works is Christine Braun, the Collections Department Lead. She’s responsible for the day-to-day collection management, including care and maintenance of the physical works. She’s also the first person staff turn to whenever they want to find digital representations of works in the collection.
“To me, that’s the most exciting part – that even though the physical works aren’t there, now the best digital representation that we can share is there in Terentia, and it’s findable.”
Christine Braun
Lead, Collections
The Goal
Though the Art Gallery of Hamilton boasts more than 10,000 works of art, only 3% to 5% of that is on display at any given time. The rest are locked up in physical vaults to keep them safe, since no museum has room to display its whole collection at once.
The Collections Department at the Art Gallery of Hamilton wanted a way to make their collection accessible digitally, even if they couldn’t share every physical work at once. After applying for and getting a grant to expand their digital archives, they brought on a Digital Archivist, Andrea Howard.
Andrea started by looking at a digital inventory, performing an in-depth analysis and setting up an organizational structure for the Collection Department. She tracked where the department already had digital assets and made plans for further digitization.
Yet, she wanted to do more than simply digitize the collection. As Andrea put it, “We were looking for a way to check the boxes of everyone’s assets – not just from the Collections Department, but other departments as well.” That meant the ability to manage and share digital assets from multiple departments.
The Challenge
With Andrea’s assistance, the Art Gallery of Hamilton engaged in a huge digitization effort, generating digital versions for about half of their collection.
The difficulty was that their digital assets were spread out in multiple locations – hard drives, internal drives, offsite storage, and elsewhere. With files here, there and everywhere, the museum needed to find a central repository to allow them to manage their digital assets and provide details about their physical assets.
In short, they needed a Digital Asset Management system. But it couldn’t be just any system – they wanted a DAM capable of understanding collections management as well.
The Solution
After a detailed search, the Art Gallery of Hamilton chose Terentia to be their Digital Asset Management system. Since then, they’ve seen some clear benefits to their choice:
Ability to create “object” and “people” records and connect them to assets
Terentia synchronizes records from the museum’s Collections Management system, including records for objects and people. This allows the museum to provide details about works in their physical collection to users in their DAM system and connect records for artists to records of their works.
Partnership
The Art Gallery of Hamilton team collaborates with Terentia and has input into its roadmap. Christine said, “We appreciate the willingness to partner rather than just provide a service.”
Search and Discover
Because users add many information points to an asset, Terentia offers a highly configurable, in-depth search that allows casual users to find what they need. “I like that there are different points of entry for whatever you’re searching for, and the fuzzy search is fabulous,” Andrea said.
Maintain integrity
The Collections Department can create and monitor MD5 checksums using Terentia, allowing them to track the integrity and health of their digital assets.
Empowering Administrators
The team at the Art Gallery of Hamilton was able to use Terentia’s built-in low code, drag-and-drop schema manager to design and configure a set of metadata fields to suit their needs.
They also have the option to add more fields whenever they want to. The museum was able to decide on the record layout on a user-by-user, role, or departmental basis so that records are organized in a way that makes sense for their organization.
“We have peace of mind. This system is so intuitive and user-friendly, just like the support from the Terentia team. The fact that everything is so organized and has integrity is very comforting.”
Christine Braun
Lead Collections
The Results
Since using Terentia DAM, the Collections Department now has many more details about objects in the collection at their fingertips, and they can create connections in the DAM to the works of art, as well as associating them with artists to create a rich, interconnected web of information.
At the same time, the DAM has allowed them to capture essential legacy metadata that might otherwise have been lost, including details about how a work is housed or where a digital asset was initially located before it was ingested into the museum’s DAM system, “all of which is important information for the history of the asset, the workflows of past documentation practices at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and our general administrative history,” Andrea noted.
Having a DAM has also further spurred their efforts to digitize their collection. Overall, the Art Gallery of Hamilton has increased the digital images in their records by 40 to 50%, adding a greater variety to their digital offerings. In addition, they’ve added video, documents, and 3D assets to their DAM, so the system can go beyond just static images.
Now that so much digital content is available, several departments, including Development and Marketing, have expressed interest in using the system. “We’ve definitely seen an uptick in visitors,” Christine said. The Collections Department is looking forward to adding more teams to Terentia, and with them, more assets.
Key Takeaways
Multiple Asset Types
Choose a system that can handle a variety of asset types.
Connections
Create connections between physical works, artists, and digital assets to add depth to your records.
Collaborate
Select a vendor that will partner with you
to meet your needs.
Connect with Our DAM Experts
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