“Digital Record Made of Ancient Northwest Indigenous Art Lost in Museum Fire” and the Reciprocal Research Network

From The Canadian Press:

Centuries-old artifacts from the Pacific northwest coast are among items lost in the recent fire that destroyed the National Museum of Brazil, but a museum curator in Vancouver says the North American works will live on through digitization.
Karen Duffek, a curator with the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, says about 40 northwest coast items, including a more than 300-year-old piece of Tlingit armour from Alaska, burned in Sunday’s blaze.
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Another curator at the university, working with the Brazil museum, had managed to digitize 42 pieces before the fire, posting pictures and exact details about the armour, several artifacts from the Aleutian Islands, some Haida bowls and a box. Duffek described the result as a digital portal. That portal to the Reciprocal Research Network links to 30 museums around the world and Duffek said it is designed so that Indigenous artists and community researchers can digitally access their heritage, no matter where it is located.

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Filed under: Digital Preservation, News