The famous Art Center of Henie Onstad just outside of Oslo holds some of the most interesting contemporary art exhibitions in Norway with more than 8000 art pieces.

CHALLENGE

The private museum which opened the doors first time back in 1968started a digitization process in 2020 which exposed the status of their digital assets from previous exhibitions and collections. As part of a migration to a new collection management system (CMS), it became clear that some of the collections were in bad shape. It is a difficult challenge to maintain digital collections available over decades.

Lots of audio, video and images from the exhibitions and art pieces from the 80s, 90s and2000s were at high risk of being obsolete due to old physical formats and lack of sufficient documentation.

SOLUTION

Piql was recruited to help convert existing material from a selection of 130+ art pieces that had been identified to be “at risk”. The information was currently stored in different medias like floppy discs, USB-sticks, external hard-drives, but also more obscure medias like older tapes and even analogue film. Having worked with all kinds of media around the world, Piql began the process of converting the data from the old medias and making sure it was still readable and kept in a proper archival format.

The analysis of the content identified that some of the materials were copies of each other with limited documentation and metadata to explain the details of the exhibitions. Still, most of thematerial was accessible and converted.

Following the conversion process, it was clear for the institution that it was important to safeguard the material for the future. Thus, the material was uploaded to piqlConnect for preservation preparation. Some of the content were lacking relevant metadata information which must be included later, either manually or from their collection management system Museumplus.

Further, newer acquired collections from Sandra Mujinga and Ann Lislegaard were prepared and preserved on piqlFilm to ensure that these collections would not be at the same risk as the historical content in the future. In addition to having a secure offline copy of these collections stored on piqlFilm with documentation for future retrieval, a copy of the files is made available through the cloud in piqlConnect. Thus, the institution will have both an access copy and security copy of their archived content making sure the information is never becoming obsolete or lost in the future.

FUTURE

More of the digital content from the collections of Henie Onstad will be safeguarded using piqlConnect and piqlFilm. Remaining work has to be done to continue improving the quality of metadata on the historical works to make it easier for conservators and former archivists in the institution be able to navigate through the collections. Part of that is to automate the process of transferring data from the collection management system to the preservation and secure storage workflow of piqlConnect.

Continuing its collaboration with the Henie Onstad Art Center, Piql will undoubtedly ensure the reliable preservation of important artworks in an appropriate archival way.