Photographing Public art in the US has some special problems (though other areas may have their own special problems!) 1. is copyright protection, but see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Public_art_and_copyrights_in_the_U... which is quite helpful 2. is getting a list of what is considered "public art." The Smithsonian Institution maintains a list of art known as SIRIS and a sub-list SOS (Save our Sculpture) and it is fairly easy to determine what is outside. BUT, it can include almost anything that might be possibly considered sculpture - e.g. 10 little knick-knacks carved on the front of a small church, or several dozen individual copies of one commercially sold war memorial. Also good addresses and updated info can be rare and coordinates are non-existant. In short very messy and too large.
But please keep in contact with me, or maybe User:Sarah Steirch or User:Slowking4 about the project and the May photoshoot.
Peter Ekman User:Smallbones
Message: 2 Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2012 13:01:26 +0200 From: Jane Darnell jane023@gmail.com To: Wiki Loves Monuments Photograph Competition wikilovesmonuments@lists.wikimedia.org Cc: wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wiki Loves Monuments] Wiki Loves Public Art (WLPA) needs your help Message-ID: CAFVcA-FqS5BH4WSGkM4bC7ec7rpAgjHCAdoCCPqjx=MLZ=NjYA@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
John Great initiative! Thanks for the tip, and good point about May vs. September regarding WLM, but these can easily be linked together, meaning Wiki(p/m)edians can take pictures of statues and other public art whilst working from a list of monument numbers...
To be clear, are you going to keep your Public art idea like WLM's, in the sense that "only photos with a unique id taken during the competition month will be eligible for a prize"? WLM is basically just a Wikimedia Commons project, and the fruits of that project can be used by Wikipedia, but there is no Wikipedia part of the competition as it is today.
Right off the top of my head I can think of lots of other ways to track public art, such as historical artworks commissioned by a governing body that once were on Square X and were replaced by artwork Y for reason Z, etc. This kind of tracking would require various references and would need to be integrated somehow with Wikipedia, I think, as pictures alone don't tell the whole story, the way pictures of physical monuments taken for WLM do.
In other words, what is your precise, identifiable and verifiable definition of "public art", rather than "sculptures, mosaics, mural paintings, memorials and place specific installments in the public space"? Jane
2012/7/2 John Andersson johnandersson86@hotmail.com
Hallo everybody,
We have just started working with the Wiki Loves Public Art (WLPA)[1] contest that will focus on getting pictures on sculptures, mosaics, mural paintings, memorials and place specific installments in the public space. If you are interested in public art, enjoy organizing events, think that it is cool and interesting to work with projects that increase cooperation between the Chapters, or would like to work towards GLAM in your country, well then this would be something for you! We are looking for all kinds of volunteers and especially for national coordinators that can help us get things going in the countries and coordinate the volunteer efforts!
As we don't want to intrude upon the fantastic Wiki Loves Monument contest we are thinking about holding WLPA during the month of May in 2013. However, May will hopefully give us enough time to work on this and provide good enough weather so that the pictures look nice and people think that it is fun to go out and find the art works.
We are of course aware of the tricky copyright legislations in different countries but thanks to the fact that this is organized together with Europeana (www.europeana.eu) we have the possibility to use Europeana's team of judicial experts in finding out answers on some of the questions. So if you have a question that is not answered on Commons:Freedom of Panorama[2] please write up your questions on relevant judicial matters on our list and we will forward it to Europeana.[3]
Both me and the project leader, Lennart Guldbrandsson, will be at Wikimania and we would love to met and talk to you about this in person!
I hope to hear from you soon!
All the best,
John
*John Andersson* Wikimedia Sweden (WMSE) Event Manager, Europeana Awareness
Phone: +46(0)73-3965189 Email: JohnAndersson86@hotmail.com Skype: johnandersson86