Oregon: The Portland Art Museum Digitizes Its Collections With Hi-Res Photographs

From The Oregonian:

The Portland Art Museum has begun a large-scale project to document its artwork with high-resolution digital photographs. Documenting its collection with photographs is nothing new. The museum has boxes of black-and-white negatives, slides and transparencies going back decades. What’s new is putting digital photos online for everyone to see, from fourth-graders to Korean scholars. With a couple of clicks, an entire collection — Northwest art or Native American art, for example — can be available, instead of a fraction of it because of limited gallery space. Only 5 percent of the museum’s 43,000 objects are ever on view.
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But photos are only the beginning. Curators will also provide links to the wide world of online information.
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The process at PAM began three years ago when initial state funding allowed the museum to hire additional staff for the project. It’s not cheap. So far, funds total $631,000, Urquhart says, and come from the state’s CHAMP program ($461,000 from Culture, Heritage, Art, Movies, Preservation), the Institute of Museum and Library Services ($150,000) and the National Endowment for the Arts ($20,000).

Learn Much More About the Program, Read the Complete Article
Direct to Database, Search Online Collections
See Also: Learn About “Object Stories” at The Portland Art Museum

Filed under: Funding, Libraries, News, Preservation