Presentation part of a panel on Collection Documentation Modeling Wikidata and CIDOC-CRM during CIDOC 2018 in Heraklion, 29 Sept - 5 Oct 2018.

1. Museums using Wikipedia
Trilce Navarrete - CIDOC 2018
Heraklion - 29 Sept–5 Oct 2018

2. Today
• Conclusions
– Take home
• General Experience
– Paintings used in Wikipedia articles
• Specific Experience
– Tropenmuseum: Ethnographic Museum
Amsterdam
– Metropolitan Museum of Art: NY
• Closing

3. What is … ?
• Wikipedia is an
important source
of information
(for people and
for machines).

4. What is … ?
• Images of
collections can
serve to illustrate
topics, within an
educational
environment.

5. What is … ?
• Museums can gain
visibility, breaking
down barriers of
space, time, and
status.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red

7. Method
Dataset: 10,054 paintings in 26,858 English Wikipedia
articles (2017)
Method:
- Wikidata ‘paintings’ = 224,374
- With location / date / creator = 89,637 (excluding
doubles)
- With image = 27,501
- Wikipedia articles = 10,054 (36% of images used in
articles)
- Long tail = popularity of few items (most used in
<20 pages)

8. General experience: paintings
• How are paintings used in English articles
– 10,054 paintings (36%) used in 26,858 English
Wikipedia articles (2017)
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
10,054

9. General experience: paintings
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
-900
997
1230
1301
1337
1375
1404
1428
1448
1468
1487
1506
1525
1544
1563
1582
1601
1620
1639
1658
1677
1696
1715
1734
1753
1772
1791
1810
1829
1848
1867
1886
1905
1924
1943
1962
1981
2000
Paintings Images
Copyright hole

10. General experience: paintings
• An earlier dataset 28,613 paintings in 160,174
Wikipedia articles showed cultural differences:
– French and Portuguese editions most likely to use
artworks

11. General experience: paintings
• An earlier dataset 28,613 paintings in 160,174
Wikipedia articles showed cultural differences:
– French and Portuguese editions most likely to use
artworks

12. General experience: paintings
• There is a prevalence for portraits
- About itself: painting as painting
- About collecting institutions
- About the past: lack of alternative image
- E.g. portraits, battles, locations, extinct animals…
- About a concept of technique
- E.g. colours, conditions (obesity), traits (accounting)…
- As alternative to photograph (e.g. autopsy, rape)
- As symbol
- E.g. liberty, psychosis…
- As contextual information
- Visual metadata
- E.g. biodiversity, society…

13. General experience: paintings

14. General experience: paintings

15. General experience: paintings
0
500000
1000000
1500000
2000000
2500000
3000000
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Average 11.9 million views per month

16. Tropenmuseum

17. Tropenmuseum
• Collection of 369,000 pieces
• (153,000 material culture/ 216,000
photographic)
• Digital policy: open
• Collaboration with Wikimedia started in 2009
– 45,000 object images and historical photographs
– 4,208 photographs for Wiki Africa project
Navarrete and Borowiecki, 2017

18. Tropenmuseum
Year #articles # Page views
2010 2318 2647400
2011 3648 4694638
2012 5069 7547516
2013 9239 7999356
2014 10761 11498499
2015 11268 9023076
2016 14098 15644714
2017 14901 15699896
2018 12076 17323119
0
5000000
10000000
15000000
20000000
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
• From 2.6 m average
monthly views to
17.3 million in 97
months (8 years).
• 600,000 views on website
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blue-faced_rail

19. Tropenmuseum

20. Metropolitan Museum of Art

21. Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Collection of 461,000 objects
• (13,000 paintings)
• Digital policy: open
• Collaboration with Wikimedia started in 2017
– 364,000 donated part of Open Access Initiative
Navarrete and Villaespesa, forthcoming

22. Metropolitan Museum of Art

23. Metropolitan Museum of Art

24. Closing
• Wikipedia is an important source of
information (for people and for machines).
• Images of collections can serve to illustrate
topics, within an educational environment.
• Museums can gain visibility, breaking down
barriers of space, time, and status.

25. Thank you
For more references see: TrilceNavarrete.com