Enduring Impact: A Story of Digitization at The Met and Key Learnings
Introduction
Seventeen years ago, in the summer of 2006, after graduating from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, I began my second internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City. I was excited about my potential future career and the opportunity to work at one of the world’s great art and cultural institutions.
My assignment for my long-term internship in the summer of 2006 was to research, catalog, and digitize information about The Met’s collection of prints within the Drawings and Prints Department from the American Scene period and Great Depression, including prints made by artists hired to work on the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP) and Federal Art Project under the Works Progress (after 1939, “Projects,”) Administration (WPA). The American Scene period, 1920-1940, included artists with regional styles and subject matter interests across the United States in both urban and rural communities. The PWAP and WPA were government-created and funded employment initiatives to support artists and workers during the Great Depression in the United States - a unique period of cultural and economic activity in the history of the country.
My work on American Scene, PWAP, and WPA prints gave me practical and on-the-ground skills during the internship that were the foundation for future roles at The Met, where I worked on collection digitization, conservation, digital asset management, and time-based media. I would spend over a decade at The Met, with seven different positions. These culminated with guiding and launching The Met’s Open Access program in 2017 and being the first partnerships manager for the institution in the Digital Department. I managed and developed relationships with organizations such as Google, Ithaka, Pinterest, and Wikimedia communities in this role.
Working With American Scene and Work Project Prints
As a curatorial intern, I honed my cataloging and research skills and learned from professional experts who guided me. I also had the joy of giving public tours of the museums starting from the Great Hall, to hundreds of museum visitors.
While some of The Met’s works on paper from the American Scene, the PWAP, and WPA had been cataloged and digitized, the majority remained undocumented digitally as of 2006. As a young art historian, I used a laptop, spreadsheets, and a long ethernet cable to work with card catalog index cards, prints, and plates from the Index of American Design.
As the summer progressed, I cataloged over 1,500 prints by notable and lesser-known American artists. These works impressed me with their diversity of compositional techniques, mediums, and subjects. The prints also reflected the themes of American art and life during the period, such as abstraction and naturalism, capital and labor, environmentalism and industrialism, and rural and urban. The artists used graphic art's high contrast, dynamic color, line and shape, and personal stylistic techniques to communicate their visual messages about daily American life and larger artistic and sociocultural issues.
Upon completion of my internship, I authored internal reports and compiled spreadsheets with data from artworks, index cards, files, and other research materials. These reports documented new information and offered recommendations for future campaigns to catalog and digitize artworks. I also compiled a bibliography of relevant reference works. My work to digitize these artworks would enable them to be imaged and more readily utilized in the future by other curators, students, and scholars for exhibition, publication, and teaching purposes.
Inspiring Open Access
My research on American Scene, PWAP, and WPA artworks introduced me to leading art, cultural, and historical figures in the period. The artwork's aesthetic qualities and critical viewpoints defined an era defined by adversity, depression, and as well as hope. Making these prints more accessible through digitization and sharing online shaped my vision for future digital art history and humanities scholarship. It also inspired me to make The Met one of the greatest and largest open access arts and cultural repositories in the world at the time in 2017 with its own Met Open Access program.
As a museum staff person and consultant, I have focused on bringing global access and opportunity to art and information. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to bring art to billions of people, in collaboration with clients, colleagues, and partners. The open access programs I helped build and sustain (in addition to The Met, I guided The Cleveland Museum of Art and The Smithsonian Institution on their open access programs) are a fundamental platform shift and threshold change in art history. The Met's digitization efforts, its open access program, and its successors are platforms of possibility for our and future generations to foster the creation of new artworks, research, and economic opportunity.
Museums should be dedicated to supporting and serving aims that benefit not only ourselves but also those we do not know or may come in the future, thereby fostering an enduring impact.
Art For the Millions 2023
In 2023, The Met had an exhibition and publication entitled, “Art for the Millions: American Culture and Politics in the 1930s.” The exhibition took a topical approach, comparing the 1920s and 1940s and our own times. It drew upon a range of objects of diverse media and subject matter. The Met’s website has written content features in addition to the print publication, which provides introductory and overview context about the exhibition and the contributors' contemporary viewpoints.
When I learned of the exhibition, I checked The Met’s website and exhibition page to view the content and examine the list of objects included in the exhibition. I was able to identify that two American Scene and six WPA prints I personally cataloged were in the exhibition. In addition to exploring all the digital content available on the exhibition as the first priority, I made the trip back to The Met to see these works that I had cataloged, researched, and handled with care as I was interested in visiting artworks again and observe public response at the exhibition.
The artworks included in the exhibition on view at the time I visited, that I directly worked on were:
American Scene
Thomas Hart Benton. "Approaching Storm." 1940. Image: 9 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches (24.8 x 32.4 cm). Sheet: 11 3/4 x 16 inches (29.8 x 40.6 cm) Lithograph. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Anonymous Gift, 1942. 42.110.4.
John Steuart Curry. "John Brown." Published by Associated American Artists. 1939. Lithograph. Image: 14 3/4 x 11 inches (37.5 x 27.9 cm). Sheet: 19 1/4 x 13 1/4 inches (48.9 x 33.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of Dr. Joseph I. Singer. 1982.1140.
Works Progress (Projects) Administration
Ida York Abelman. "Man and Machine." Published by the WPA. ca. 1939. Lithograph. Image: 10 x 12 in. (25.4 x 30.5 cm). Sheet: 11 1/2 x 16 in. (29.2 x 40.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of New York City W.P.A., 1943. 43.33.34.
David Paul Chun. "San Francisco Pier." Published by the WPA. 1943. Lithograph. Image: 9 1/2 × 14 1/4 in. (24.1 × 36.2 cm). Sheet: 11 1/2 × 15 1/2 in. (29.2 × 39.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of New York City W.P.A., 1943. 43.47.274.
Harry Gottlieb. "Three Lane Traffic." Published by the WPA. Federal Art Project. NYC. 1937. Lithograph. Image: 10 1/2 in. × 14 in. (26.7 × 35.6 cm). Sheet: 13 1/2 × 17 3/4 in. (34.3 × 45.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift New York City W.P.A., 1943. 43.33.591.
Harry Gottlieb. "Rock Drillers." Published by the WPA. Federal Art Project. NYC. 1939. Screenprint. Image: 13 1/2 × 13 1/4 in. (34.3 × 33.7 cm). Sheet: 17 1/2 × 15 1/4 in. (44.5 × 38.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift New York City W.P.A., 1943. 43.33.946.
Riva Helfond. "Curtain Factory." Published by the WPA. 1936-39. Lithograph. Image: 12 in. × 15 3/4 in. (30.5 × 40 cm). Sheet: 14 1/4 × 20 1/2 in. (36.2 × 52.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of New York City W.P.A., 1943. 43.33.694.
Louis Lozowick. "Night Repairs." Published by the WPA. 1939. Lithograph. Image: 11 3/4 × 8 3/4 in. (29.8 × 22.2 cm). Sheet: 14 1/4 × 10 3/4 in. (36.2 × 27.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gift of the Work Projects Administration, New York, 1943. 43.33.1181.
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It was exciting and inspiring to revisit “old friends” in artworks with whom I developed a close and intimate relationship during my internship. I enjoyed seeing an engaged and interested public viewing the exhibition. It is my hope for the future that The Met will create an exhibition and publication of the entire body of American Scene, PWAP, and WPA prints, posters, and Index of American Design plates to show the public the breadth and depth of the works on paper collection in focus. I further hope that the museum will continue to invest in the cataloging, digitization, and imaging of these artworks and their entire collections and make them available to the public.
Key Learnings
My work on The Met’s collection of American Scene, PWAP, and WPA prints set the stage for my development and growth at The Met and my work as an executive cultural institution leader and consultant. As the President of my own executive management consulting firm, providing business and technology professional advisory services, I help and guide my clients across commercial, government, and nonprofit sectors built on my years of experience to be empowered to lead through their tactical and strategic challenges.
My internship experience, and many years of continued professional practice, provide me with key learnings:
Continuous Digitization
For many organizations, consistent and continual investments in digital transformation have been essential to remaining relevant and serving customers. Operationalizing the digitization of assets, products, and services has been mission-critical for any organization. Continuous digitization is a strategic and long-term investment upon which organizations can build continual quality improvements for customer service.
For continuous digitization to be successful, it requires a clear understanding and ongoing commitment from leadership and the foresight to steadily advance with both pragmatism and vision into emerging technology trends that will become the next platforms for engagement.
Robust Content Management
As digital assets grow in scale and volume, increasing the rigor of their management is imperative. In addition to digital asset management, which often refers to the management of two-dimensional images and their accompanying metadata, organizations today are now producing and managing a diverse range of data and media formats, including datasets, video, 3D models, and components used to create game and mixed reality environments. This can be understood as content management.
Content is often produced in many different parts of an organization, and it is at risk of being lost, mismanaged, misused, or underutilized without centralized policies, procedures, and people to direct and guide its use for the organization as a whole. Robust content management is essential for all organizations, regardless of size or industry, for the sound governance and well-being of their operations as well as optimal customer experience. Content management coupled with brand, trademark, and licensing efforts support partnership and revenue generation efforts.
Evergreen Value
Digital technologies open the door to many possibilities for innovation, but for some organizations, they can also be a source of distraction. In their efforts to capture customers' attention, these organizations may adopt short-term or "throw-away" approaches that involve shifting too quickly to meet the latest perceived trends. By embracing new technologies with an eye toward lasting impact, organizations can create assets that can be built upon for years to come.
When investing people, time, and resources into their products and services, organizations need to consider the evergreen value of their assets and content. While communication and marketing techniques may change frequently, an organization must develop core assets that have lasting value.
Reuse and Sustainability
Organizations can achieve greater capabilities for reuse and sustainability through evergreen assets that are rich in context, well-made, deployable in multiple configurations and formats, and have the potential for migration and portability. By creating digital data, assets, products, and services well and maintaining them, organizations can develop a wellspring of opportunity that can be drawn upon and repurposed to create new content without depleting essential resources.
An asset's reuse and sustainability potential are key factors in decisions about production and maintenance that can help an organization balance growth and support its long-term viability and the best possible service to its customers.
Future-ready
The Great Depression and our time are rife with multifaceted threats, which can be understood as periods of permacrisis, a series of overlapping crises that continue one into the next over a seemingly long and uncertain period of time. Organizations that look to and build toward a resilient future with their asset acquisition, production, and management are in a better position to survive in a rapidly changing world.
Building core capabilities and enhancing the capacity for prudent, thoughtful, and strategic adaptability empowers organizations to lead. Visionary leadership amid complex and contradictory forces in business, culture, the economy, and the environment is a requirement for any organization to thrive. Making a future-ready organization, like digitization, is not a process with an endpoint or finish; it requires constant attention, marshaling needed resources, the hard work of talented people dedicated to an organization’s mission, and a quality customer experience.
Conclusion
The key learnings I gained through my internship experience and many years of continued professional practice have profoundly impacted my career and the organizations I have served. These learnings have helped me to develop a deep understanding of the challenges facing businesses today, and the strategies that can be used to overcome them.
Ultimately, I have come to understand the importance of trying to create work that will have a lasting impact. Work with lasting impact creates something that will continue to benefit people long after we are gone. This could be anything you pursue in your life and work, such as an experience, product, or service. Whatever it is, it should improve quality, provide long-term value, be resilient, sustainable, and resonate with customers and users over time.
Additional Resources
If you are interested in learning more about American Scene, PWAP, and WPA art projects, the additional resources listed here may be of interest to you.
- Library of Congress: WPA Posters
- National Gallery of Art, D.C.: Index of American Design
- National Gallery of Art, D.C.: Reba and Dave Williams Collection
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: 1934: A New Deal for Artists
- United States General Services Administration Fine Arts Collection: New Deal Art 1933-1943