Walker Art Center


This is the deployment page for the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis, Minnesota

As part of the Getty's Online Scholarly Catalogue project, the Walker Art Center is moving data about its permanent collection, currently held in several FileMaker Pro databases, into CollectionSpace.  As part of the IMLS National Leadership Grant, the Walker Art Center has been exploring what it means to catalog and manage its Performing Arts activities (commission, performance, presentation) within CollectionSpace.  Collections (11,000 works including but not limited to painting, sculpture, film, video, photography, born digital, and works on paper).

Data Mapping (updated January 2013)

The follow data maps are current to v3.2.

Accessions

Catalogue

Elements

Exhibition History

Locations

Media Handling

Names/Addresses

Vocabulary

WAC Specific Schema Extensions

WAC Specific UI labels (notes on configuration for user interface)

Data Import

A decision was made to abandon Talend after burning a few weeks trying in vain to deal with nested data and repeating XML elements in a document. The amount of work it was taking for tiny, incremental steps was simple unworkable. (I'd be very curious to see anyone's full pipeline in either Kettle or Talend, without an incredible amount of custom work and code to patch it all together...) I wanted a unified and highly customizable experience, so inspired by Chris Potts' example from the SMK (Data Migration using Talend Open Studio - DRAFT), we started over.

Since Python is much faster for me to write than Java, this attempt is written using Jython. This gives me Python scripts that can take advantage of the JAX-B jars and classes to instantiate and marshal objects into XML import streams. A working example of this, including simple extension proof-of-concept (person.employer), can be found here: https://github.com/walkerart/CollectionSpace-Import. (I realize that after this much work it would be trivial to use the REST API as well, but I sort of wanted repeatable XML import "scripts". I was also told the import was much faster than the API over many objects.)

IMLS National Leadership Grant: Workshop: November 4, 2011

We were delighted to have Susannah Schouweiler in the audience for this workshop.  She wrote a piece for the Walker online magazine (December 15, 2011) as well as posted 4 blog posts about the workshop in November/December 2011 to the Performing Arts blog on the Walker website.  We invite you to read about the workshop experience through her words. Links are listed in reverse chronological order with the most recent offering listed first.

http://www.walkerart.org/magazine/2011/collecting-performance

http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2011/11/17/cataloguing-performance-who-owns-what/

http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2011/11/10/cataloguing-performance-opening-the-kimono-are-you-going-to-let-just-anyone-see-whats-in-there/

http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2011/11/07/cataloguing-performance-how-do-you-keep-both-history-and-magic-alive/

http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2011/11/03/cataloguing-performance-how-to-catch-lightning-in-a-bottle/

Workshop Materials

imls workshop agenda participants.doc

pa_datagroups.xls

Text for CS screens.docx

PA_template_v3.doc

Collecting Performance
Art Basel panel discussion with Jens Hoffmann, Klaus Biesenbach, RoseLee Goldberg, and Robert Wilson. Recorded June 11, 2009.
Video of the conversation: http://www.artbasel.com/go/id/kwp/
Press coverage (see page 5): http://www.theartnewspaper.com/fairs/Art-Basel/2009/2.pdf
 
Digital Documentation and Performance seminar, September 23-35, 2009, organized by JISC Digital Media andUniversity of Bristol.
Case study on creating, managing and delivering digital documentation of performance work.
http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/training/digital-performance-seminars/
 
Inside Movement Knowledge
Inside Movement Knowledge was a two-year collaborative, interdisciplinary research project into new methods for the documentation, transmission and preservation of contemporary choreographic and dance knowledge.
Project website: http://insidemovementknowledge.net/
 
Securing Our Dance Heritage: Issues in the Documentation and Preservation of Dance by Catherine J. Johnson and Allegra Fuller Snyder, July 1999. (see chapter on “Access”)
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub84/pub84.html

Wireframes and Proposed Schema for Cataloguing Performing Arts

Click here to download a pdf file of the wireframes.  Click here to download an excel spreadsheet of the draft schema.