Project Title:
Request for Proposal: The Geneva Pasternak Foundation
Course:
LIS-661 – Art Documentation, Fall 2016, Pratt Institute
Project Description:
For this project, my group partner Victoria Velasco and I created a request for proposal outlining our plan for the management of the archives and art collection of an imaginary artist foundation, the Geneva Pasternak Foundation. In support of this proposal, we also created a conceptual map illustrating how these materials would be organized, and created XML records for art objects and archival materials in the collection using collections management software.
Project Documentation:
Download Presentation – Download Request for Proposal – Download Collection Records– View Class Website
Methods:
Prior to writing our proposal, Victoria and I met with Kathleen Nugent Magan, the executive director of a real artist foundation, the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, to learn more about the institutional needs of artist foundations and about how the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation has gone about managing its art and archival collections (read more about our meeting here). After our meeting with Kathleen, Victoria and I used Cmap Cloud, a conceptual mapping tool, to create a visualization of how we would hierarchically arrange and manage the collection of our theoretical artist foundation. We then used xDams, an open-source archival content management system, to create XML records for art objects and archival materials. We organized these materials according to the LIDO schema, an XML schema based on the CIDOC-CRM, a conceptual model that is increasingly being adopted as the standard model for collection documentation in art museums and other cultural heritage institutions.
My Role:
Victoria and I evenly split our work on the project. She primarily worked on organizing and creating records for the Geneva Pasternak Foundation’s archival materials, and I primarily organized and created records for the Foundation’s art collection. For the actual request for proposal, Victoria wrote the proposal’s executive summary and wrote about the historical context, current status, and scope of the Foundation’s collection, while I wrote about the methodologies of our proposal, the tools, supplies, and staff we recommended for managing the Foundation’s collection, and our proposed timeline for the project.
Learning Objective Achieved:
Communication
Rationale:
Our request for proposal was imagined as a presentation that would be delivered to the board of an artist foundation in order to seek project funding. The proposal was organized to give a clear sense of what the project’s budgetary needs and time commitments would be if we were hired by an artist foundation to manage their collection. Our conceptual mapping presents a visual representation of how we plan to implement our proposed system of organization. Additionally, the appendixes of our request for proposal go into our conceptual mapping in more detail, and also present visual examples of what collection records in the Foundations’ collection management database would look like.
Additional Learning Objective Achieved:
Technology
Rationale:
Our project makes extensive use of digital tools, including Cmap Cloud, which we used to create our conceptual map, and xDams, which we used as a collections management database and as a tool for generating XML records.
Additional Learning Objective Achieved:
User-Centered Focus
Rationale:
Our proposal was created with the needs of a specific user base, artist foundations, in mind. Although Geneva Pasternak is not a real person, Victoria and I created an elaborate back story for her to contextualize the choices we made in our proposal. We also consulted the director of an actual artist foundation to learn more about the needs of these organizations, and based the persona of Geneva Pasternak in large part on Lenore G. Tawney.