Wikimedia District of Columbia is proud to be the recipient of $50,000 in support from the Knight Prototype Fund, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Wikimedia DC will collaborate with the Smithsonian Institution on a project called the "Wiki Art Depiction Explorer", an effort to create an interface for museum visitors and other art enthusiasts to crowdsource metadata about visual depictions in museum artworks. Making this data more accurate and robust will allow further and deeper discovery of these works by anyone in the world.

The project was created by three longtime Wikimedia DC volunteers: Andrew Lih, author of The Wikipedia Revolution, Effie Kapsalis, Chief of Content & Communications Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and Robert Fernandez, member of the board of directors of Wikimedia DC. Andrew Lih is currently in South Africa for Wikimania and looks forward to talking to other Wikimedia volunteers about this project.

The aim of the Knight Prototype Fund is to support the development of innovative ideas to use technology to engage people with the arts and cultural institutions. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has previously supported organizations and projects related to Wikimedia, including the Wikimedia Foundation.

For the announcement from the Knight Foundation, see https://knightfoundation.org/press/releases/knight-prototype-fund-awards-pro...