Johnson Museum Online Project
The Johnson Museum of Art, working in conjunction with the CIDC, is in the process of
creating digital representations of the over 27,000 works housed in the museum. The
project has begun with the works on paper, the heart of the museum’s holdings. The
print collection is recognized as one of the most outstanding print collections owned by a
university and is already heavily used in support of teaching and research. Once the print
collection is digitized, the project will move onto three-dimensional objects, and other
holdings. By putting the collection on-line, students, faculty, visitors, and users on the
Internet will be able to electronically explore and research the collection from their
home, office, or one of the work stations in the museum. In addition, and building on the
work already undertake by the University’s Digital Access Coalition to integrate
digital visual materials into Cornell’s curriculum, the project hopes to actively
integrate the use of digital museum images in the University’s teaching.
To achieve these objectives, the project intends to do the following:
- Convert the small percentage of the collection already captured on traditional
photographic media to digital format.
- Over the period of two years make digital surrogates of the 15,800 works on paper, the
6,700 objects in the Asian Collection, and as much of the remainder of the collection as
can be accomplished in that time frame.
- Images will be captured at a resolution high enough to permit printing on a 9 x 12"
200 line-screen press, such as are used to produce a coffee-table art book. Images will be
shot with a minimum of 24-bit color, and color bars will be included in each shot to
facilitate color balance processing when printing.
- Digital photography should in no way damage the original objects. The Museum, therefore,
plans to work with conservators from the Williamstown Conservation Lab to certify that the
procedures used to convert the objects to digital form, and particular the lights used
when shooting, are not harmful to the objects.
- At least two derivatives from the high resolution scan will also be prepared: a medium
resolution image and a thumbnail image. The high resolution images will be stored on
CD’s for archiving and to produce copies for high-resolution printing. The medium and
thumbnail resolution images will be used for browsing and classroom work over the
Internet, and will be maintained on-line.
- Descriptions of the digital images will be moved from the existing internal database
within the museum into an Internet-accessible database for browsing and searching.
- In order to meet its ambitious time-frame, the project will actively explore methods to
efficiently capture, migrate, and store the digital images.
- In addition, investigation into the possibility of digitally watermarking the images
will also continue during the course of the project.
Museum Online Workflow |