An artistic collaboration of the Five College Consortium
MassLive has reported on the Five College Museums’ new online database, which provides access to more than 100,000 artworks held across six institutions.
The Five College Consortium has officially launched “Five College Museums: Collections Online,” a major digital initiative providing worldwide access to over 100,000 artworks and cultural objects. This new public portal integrates the shared collections of six institutions: the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum (MHCAM), theMead Art Museum at Amherst College, the Hampshire College Art Gallery, the Smith College Museum of Art, the University Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Historic Deerfield.
The project is the culmination of more than 30 years of collaboration and a multiyear effort to modernize a legacy system.
The thinking was, “Instead of having six separate collections databases, let’s create one that all of us can use together,” said Tricia Paik, the Florence Finch Abbott Director of MHCAM. “That was a groundbreaking collaboration because most freestanding museums did not embark on such an ambitious initiative.”
Funded in part by the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the new platform was developed by Keepthinking. It offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface, with simple search tools and the ability to create research albums. The system highlights each museum’s unique personality while allowing for seamless comparison across the consortium.
