Digital meets Culture

In Israel the Museums system is innovating towards digital preservation and sharing

More than 35 Museums in Israel merged into a project for enhancing Israel Cultural Heritage through digital technologies on the model of some European best practice as Europeana and Linked Heritage. At the moment phase 1 (building a management system for digital heritage: MANA) is completed and phase 2 (developing the public interface: iMus) was recently presented.

MANA is an intranet based cataloging & digitizing data warehouse unified platform for Israeli Museums, and it is actually only the 1^st phase of the whole project.

It is the central system for collections cataloging and management, serving more than 35 Museums in Israel as their major internal management tool.

MANA was designed for answering different demands regarding Israeli Museums System:

To supply a digital preservation tool
To supply a unified platform & process
To enable better artifacts accessibility

Thanks to MANA it is possible to manage different entities and properties: Artifacts e.g name, images/videos, description, artist/creator, dates, location; Collections / Exhibitions e.g. name, location, duration, artifacts; Museums e.g. name, about, location, contacts, pictures.

The 2^nd phase of the Israeli Museums collection management project is to build a user-friendly interface for the access to the resources of MANA.

Actually, it was recently presented iMus, the public frontend (web portal) of MANA. The main target of iMus is to expose the cultural treasures of Israel to the public (Researchers / Students, Tourists, New immigrants to Israel, impaired people who are accessibility challenged) with accessibility, standardization, and simplicity of use.

Furthermore, iMus supplies a web portal for museums, exhibitions, collections & artifacts. iMus is also linked to Europeana and Judaica Europeana to share and connect Israel-related contents.

The global project, run by Ram Shimony, is intended to manage a group of experts towards forming the Israeli Museums Portal, in line with Europeana and Linked Heritage projects.

Slide presentation (PDF, 1,12 MB)

Italian, Spanish and Russian photography meeting in Russia.

Photo Vernissage 2011, Saint Petersburg : «Melody and Passion of Mediterranean Italy, Spain»

For the first time in St. Petersburg, the cultural capital of Russia, Italy and Spain presented some of their most important artists of contemporary photography – more than 80 authors for a total of over 1.000 works. The event have been supported by the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg, the Consulate General of the Italian Republic, the Consulate General of Spain, the Russian Union of Art Photographers and took place in the stately neoclassic scenery of the Manage, the city’s main exhibition center. The exhibition took place from 9 to 30 September 2011 and included the presence of fine art photographers like Franco Donaggio, John Pepper and Rudy Pessina.

The event included two vast exhibition sections.

The Retrospective Section, based on rare and unique photographs from Russian and foreign archives, revealed famous and unknown, current and forgotten pages in history of Italy and Spain as well as the stories of relationships between our countries.

The Modern Photography section included works of very various genres and techniques, with different use of digital tools.

By taking photographs in the streets of modern cities, Alessandro Cirillo is far from life scenes documentation. He creates some sort of image-visions that remind scenic paintings by Edward Hopper. The main character of Cirillo’s works is the light flickering in the mysterious darkness of the city streets in the middle of the night dissolving viscous density of colors.
Gabriele Croppi also tends to philosophy of Edward Hopper and Giorgio de Chirico in his oeuvre. Streets and squares shot by the author carry portrait characteristics and soak up timeless eternity, which fills those urban landscapes with some metaphysical sense.
On the contrary the urban photographs by Franco Donaggio were created in a single burst of expressive feeling. A modern city for the master is in metal constructions, dynamics of sharp lines and forms and vivid contrasts of color which reminds of paintings by Mario Cirone. The photography of Rudy Pessina, evocative and essential, use the black and white to investigate the matter and forms, enhance the play of light that draws the reality, to grasp the intangible mystery of human presence in relation to things and environments. We learn Sicily, the beauty of its landscapes, the flavor of local cities, temperament and behavior of its citizens through the works of Gabriele Lentini and Jonh Pepper.
Photos by Francesco Comello and Monica Bulaj dedicated to the life of Russian village are imbued with the mysticism. The Sakhalyn Island, the cities of the Russian North are represented in the works of Francesco Cito and Giuliana & Simone.

The contemporary Spanish photography is represented by mature and young artists from Barcelona and Madrid.
Life in Catalonia in 1960s – 1970s with its struggle for independence, political protests, demonstrations, feminist movements come to us from the works by Manel Armengol.
Small fishing village Baixamar as if “floats” out of Nuria Grass’ childhood memories. The same mysterious, severe, full of inner dramatic sense Spain rises to our view from the photos by Israel Arino. In stark contrast are endless fests with their passions, fireworks of emotions, dances and bullfights captured in works by Jordi Cohen, Jordi Bernado, Cesar Ordonez.
Artistic experiments are demonstrated by young photographers Lucia Herero, Hassel Y Grettel, Fausti Lucia and many others.

The competitive programme of the Photo Vernissage “Melody and passion of Mediterranean” is powered by the Russian Union of Art Photographers. This section contains works that won in two contest topics: “Italy, Spain through the eyes of Russian photographers” and “Surrealistic photography”.

Within the Photo Vernissage several open master-classes have been held by the artists:
Umberto Barone & Veronica Conte – Italy, Milan,
Alessandro Cirillo – Italy, Bari,
Gabriele Lentini – Italy, Palermo,
Pier Paolo Fassetta – Italy, Venice,
Rudy Pessina – Italy, Pisa,
Pep Escoda – Spain, Barcelona,
Cesar Ordonez – Spain, Barcelona,
Fabbio Donaggio – Italy, Milan,
Lucia Herrero – – Spain, Barcelona,
Gabriele Croppi – Italy, Milan,
Raimon Sola – Spain, Barcelona,
Marco Lillini – Italy, Rome,
Hassel Y Grettel – Spain, Barcelona
Luis Jaume – Spain, Barcelona
Jordi Cohen – Spain, Barselona
ORGANIZERS
Central Exhibition Hall “MANEGE” and EC “REAL”

EXHIBITION CURATOR

Marina Jigarkhanyan

Technical sponsor – CANON

WITH THE SUPPORT OF
Committee for Culture of Saint Petersburg,
Consulate General of the Italian Republic,
Consulate General of Spain,
Center of Spanish Language and Culture ADELANTE in Saint Petersburg,
The Russian Union of Art Photographers,
Photo agency SUD 57 (Italy),
Photo agency PHOTOLTD.IT (Italy)
Tagomago Gallery (Spain)

Dissemination key role.

Linked Heritage: main goals on the dissemination

Events organized within the European projects are always a good occasion for partners’ exchange, but in particular represent a moment of high visibility for the project.

Linked Heritage has planned the organization of several events until the end of the project.

These events represent good examples of the types of third-party occasions where the project will seek to make a presentation and to gain access to important target audiences. It may be noted that consortium members are frequently involved in the organisation and/or funding of these events, and so access for the project can be assured in some cases, and is likely in others.

In summary:

– Linked Heritage will specifically target Europeana, EuropeanaLabs, the Council of Content Providers and Aggregators, through established links, co-membership of the Content Council and the Linked Heritage consortium and presentations and promotions at events where Europeana will be present and active.

– Linked Heritage will address sister projects and other content providers through concertation, seminars, publications, guidelines and handbooks, etc. The issues addressed by Linked Heritage are of real interest to this audience, because of their importance in the future development of online cultural content.

– Policy groups and government agencies continue to have enormous influence through their ownership or funding of many memory institutions, and their coordinating role at national and regional levels. Several such bodies are members of the Linked Heritage consortium, and will target their peers.

– The private sector will be targeted using Linked Heritage partners as “reference sites” which demonstrate the new services and opportunities and the added value which engagement with Europeana, with Linked Heritage and with the public sector can bring.

– Linked Heritage will specifically target those elements of the cultural sector which are “non-heritage” (not libraries, museums or archives), such as arts centres, cultural tourism locations, etc.

In summary, the following activities will be carried out:

– Website creation and maintenance: it will be essential and it will clearly outline the rationale for the project, the aims of the project and the approach which the project is taking.

– Seminars and presentations will enable the project dissemination working group to gain access to the professional audiences they require.

– 3 international conferences: one under the Hungarian Presidency of the EU hosted by the National Sechzeny Library, one under the Irish Presidency of the EU organised by the Library Council and the closing conference in Rome that will deliver an opportunity to present and discuss the project’s results, the opportunities for further development and the path of integration into Europeana.

– Academic publications and conferences, in order to raise awareness of its work, to attract users for validation and feedback, and to raise the profile of the project as a whole.

– Meetings with Europeana and EuropeanaLabs : even though the Europeana Foundation is not a member of the Linked Heritage consortium, working together will be important and valuable for both projects.

– Encounters with the private sector: briefings will be delivered to the private sector, on events where significant numbers of appropriate stakeholders will be present.

The publications that are foreseen in the workplan will be presented in all the public events where the partners of the Linked Heritage project participate.

The publications will be available online for download on the project website.

The printed copies of the publications will be used in particular for face-to-face meetings, during the face-to-face training and provided to the participants of the closing conference in Rome.