Thoughts on Wikipedia Saves Public Art
11/9/10 I am trained in history, not art. Although I appreciate art and often find it aesthetically pleasing, I do not pretend to have the same level of affection or devotion to it as someone trained in fine arts or art history. Instead, I like to use art as source material for historical and cultural study. The IUPUI Public Art Collection is important because it helps to contextualize the climate in which the IUPUI campus was created and its subsequent evolution. Because it is an urban campus that sprang to life in the mid- to late-20th century, it is appropriate that most of the public art pieces that live on the campus originate from and reflect that time period. It might be strange to find sculpture from medieval Europe or 19th-century Africa on the campus of a university in downtown Indianapolis. (Although if we were to find such art that would also tell us interesting things of a different sort about the culture of the university, but I digress.) The public art at IUPUI tells us a lot. A great deal of it is abstract, reflecting the ambiguity of the modern and post-modern world. Most is contructed of post-industrial materials, which indicates a reliance on industry and technology that extends through every facet of our world today. Much of this work is probably commenting on this very idea. The majority is American-made. This is not altogether suprising given the geographic location of the campus, but it might also be a measure of the simultaneous emergence of the United States as a world power. The fact that so much of the public art at IUPUI reflects our current moment in time (and those not far past) is a signal that IUPUI wants to be a forward-thinking institution. It seems to want to embrace the here and now.
I must say I'm quite excited about this project so far. I've been thinking about Wikipedia and its potential for a while, and I really like its approach. The democratization of knowledge is so important in the world we live in. Museums are often still trying to maintain their death-grip on authority, but recent trends in the industry are proving that this is not a viable option in the 21st century. Having in-house Wikipedians may be a great way for museum pros to start sharing all the great information they have. Projects like this will hopefully prove valuable to historians (and others) who may be able to use public art as source material to create greater understanding.
11/16/10 I added to the Black Titan article. The sculpture is part of the ARTSPARK at the Indianapolis Art Center in Broad Ripple, where I currently live. (I'm originally from Fort Wayne, but I couldn't find any articles on any public sculptures there. There are only 2 articles on sculptures in Broad Ripple.) The article is a stub so there was not a lot of information to begin with, but what was there was good. The information that was in it was primarily from the Save Outdoor Sculpture project which I believe to be quite reliable. Because of that, I trusted what was there. The other main source was the Art Center's website, which also seemed trustworthy. Overall, I'd give the article an 8 or 9 on the trustworthy scale. The headings are laid out clearly and simply. I needed to change one to make it fit the additions I made to the text. The article had been put into the "African American art" and "Outdoor Sculptures in Indianapolis" categories, and I added the "Public art" category.
This article is so short that its value is limited. It provides the basic information about the sculpture, but little in the way of context. However, a basic Google search on the sculpture turns up little other reliable information, and I think that elevates the value of this Wikipedia article. It seems there isn't much out there on this sculpture at all. There is no information about the sculptor, John Spaulding, in the article, but it does link to a separate article on him that helps provide extra information.
11/30/10 I think I must owe a big thank you to last year's Collections Care and Management class for working out a lot of the kinks with the WSPA project, because so far I have had very little trouble using Wikipedia for this project. Yes, the process can be quite tedious and time-consuming, but I remember their level of frustration wtih the project last year and mine at this point isn't even close to that. The templates that have been provided and the ease with which I can cut and paste the formatting I need makes all this fairly simple. At this point I only have a few concerns, and they are probably pretty specific to my situation. I'm a bit worried about the photograph for the bust of Colonel Richard Owen, because there is a copy of that bust at Owen Hall at IU Bloomington, and there are photos of it online. I don't want that to conflict with the photo I put up, but I didn't know who owned the other photos so I went ahead and used my own. (Plus my photo shows the whole sculpture whereas the others I've found are all close-up shots.) Also, I'm having a couple of issues with disambiguation. There are multiple Richard Owens and everything I've found on Wikipedia so far about Col. Owen links (mistakenly) to an article on a British scientist also named Richard Owen. My Richard Owen does not have his own article. I feel like I should probably at least start an article on him- maybe a Christmas break project. Additionally, Rudolf Schwarz sculpted the Abraham Lincoln plaque, which in and of itself causes problems because there are innumerable references to Lincoln on Wikipedia. There are also multiple Rudolf Schwarzes, and no separate article exists for my Rudolf Schwarz. I did try adding the disambiguation and redirected search formatting that I saw in other articles, but it didn't seem to work properly. I need to play with it more later. Finally, I had to make my own judgment call on how to denote a sculpture having both a designer and a sculptor. I asked around and didn't get a clear answer.
Overall I'm finding both Wikipedia and Flickr fairly easy to navigate. Emily Janowiak's directions for Flickr and other class members' directions, plus all the work done last year have made it go quite smoothly for me. I'm enjoying this project because I like the idea of it, of using class work for something that will hopefully be useful to somebody else. Also the project has allowed me to get back in to historical research which, I'm sure you've probably guessed, I geek out over.