Skidmore College’s on-campus art museum just put added a permanent collection in cyberspace. The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore, in collaboration with Linked by Air, a New York City-based design firm, has unveiled a major digital expansion with the launch of its “online collection” hub.
The new microsite groups 1100 high-resolution images of the museum’s drawings, paintings, sculptures, prints and photographs by categories such as artist, theme or Skidmore class. Virtual visitors can also browse creative responses to the artwork provided by students, faculty, curators and even the artists themselves. These personalized writings and videos provide an added element to the online collections, breathing new life into them. Some examples include artists such as Njideka Akunyili Crosby speaking about the influence of the photographs of Malick Sidibé on her artwork, as well as Tim Rollins and K.O.S. speaking about their work, Winterreise (songs XX-XXIV) (after Schubert). There are also creative responses within the collection from members of the Skidmore faculty members such as Professor of Political Science Beau Breslin, who speaks about Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler’s Constitution on Tour; and even students such as Sophie Heath of the class of 2018, on Fred Wilson’s Pharaoh Fetish.
Says the Tang’s Dayton Director Ian Berry, the project’s leader, of the new digital collection: “We operate the museum as a laboratory of ideas, and this expands that mission by giving space for multiple voices to bring fresh perspectives on the objects in our care.” Berry also notes that the 1100 images and 52 responses currently inhabiting the site are just the tip of the iceberg, and the museum plans to further expand the collection as new ideas emerge.
In the meantime, take a look at a curated group of the collection’s images in the gallery above.