Wikimedia/Museum Day 2020

International Museum Day 2020

CALL TO IMPROVE THE PRESENCE OF

MUSEUMS ON WIKIPEDIA

ICOM has been organizing the International Museum Day for over 40 years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many museums are not allowed to open their doors for this year's Museum Day, many events have been canceled. In Switzerland, the Museum Day is postponed to 2021, in Germany, however, the German Museum Association calls for virtual participation.

With this call we, Wikimedia Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France and Italy, want to give an impulse to support this initiative, despite the actual circumstances, where culture knows no borders and lives on virtually. Many museums release high resolution images and information under an open access online, or organize virtual collection tours.

We thank all the volunteers and authors engaging in our projects and we hope you will continue to make a contribution to free cultural knowledge by adding and completing the free encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikimedia sister projects on topics related to the theme of International Museum Day 2020 ‚Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion‘.

"The objective of International Museum Day (IMD) is to raise awareness of the fact that, “Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.”

In keeping with the Museums Day and this year's focus, we invite you to help us completing and improving the presence of museums on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

Thank you for participating!

IMD Theme 2020 - Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion

International Museum Day 2020 will focus on empowering diversity and inclusion within cultural institutions.

What does this mean?

Museums have the potential to create meaningful experiences for people of all origins and backgrounds, that are central to their social values. Museums aim to demonstrate their relevance by engaging constructively in the political, social and cultural realities of modern society.

Due to the high regard in which museums are held by society, the challenges of inclusion and diversity and the difficulty of navigating complex social issues in increasingly polarized environments, are important ones.

An increasing public expectation for social change has catalyzed a conversation around museums' potential for social good in the form of exhibitions, conferences, performances, education programs, and new initiatives. However, there remains much to do to overcome conscious and subconscious power dynamics that can create disparities within museums, and between museums and their visitors.

These disparities can relate to many topics, including ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and identity, socioeconomic background, education level, physical ability, political affiliation and religious beliefs.

As institutions at the heart of society, museums have the power to establish dialogue between cultures, empower diversity and inclusion in cultural institutions and build bridges for cultural exchange as a catalyst for peace among people.

Clara Julia Elissa von Rappard, Self-portrait 1894, Museum of Fine Arts, Bern
Miss Hardy auf der Rosenterrasse im Rugen, 1883
Martha Stettler, Dans le Jardin du Luxembourg
Martha Stettler, Fex Gletscher

Consult the Geographic Museums Map for linked Wikimedia Content

The following geographic map locates the Museums in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France and Italy based on Wikidata records. If you want to know which museums already have a Wikipedia article and which do not, as well as the respective quality of the article, you can find out by using the link to the interactive map below. Have fun exploring!

If you are a Wikidata expert, participate in our Wikidata contest and help us improve and inject meta data into Wikidata to complete the geographical visualization on museums in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France and Italy.

How to read the interactive map:

Black symbols: no Wikipedia article
Red symbols: one Wikipedia article
Orange symbols: at least two Wikipedia articles
Green symbols: four Wikipedia articles

How to participate & contribute

Wikidata Contest

From May 3 - 18, 2020 we run a Wikidata contest related to museum meta data. Please follow this LINK to find all contest related information, how to register and participate, as well as about the prizes. Every contribution counts to complete the geographical visualization on museums in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France and Italy linked to Wikimedia content.

Wikipedia Articles

As a beginner or intermediate Wikipedia author you can contribute for example by improving and completing an existing article, inserting appropriate images and image galleries, inserting links to art collections on museums webarchives and portals, updating info boxes or inserting Wikidata info boxes into Wikipedia articles. If you are an expert Wikipedia author you might engage in creating a completely new article. You can consult the geographic museums map and explore museums with no article, and write about a cultural institution or translate an existing article in a different language. Please remember, if you want your new article about a museum to be reflected on the museum map, you have to interlink it in the Wikidata record of the respective cultural institution.

We have set-up an outreach dashboard for all other activities aside form the Wikidata contest. If you want to enroll and assign the articles or categories you are working on for IMD2020 please click here. The registration on the dashboard is optional.

Wikimedia Commons

If you like to work with media files, you might want to upload artwork, collections, artist portraits and museum related images to Wikimedia Commons. Due to the actual situation, it will not be possible to visit a museum for taking photographs and even if, it is needed to be compliant with the legal framework. Maybe you still have many images, you did not have time to share and upload into Wikimedia Commons. Nevertheless, many cultural institutions have released images of their collections under a free license the past years. The collections are accessible through their portal or webarchive but are not yet available in Wikimedia Commons or embedded in a Wikipedia article.

GLAM Projects

Thanks to all the voluntary community and work across the globe and countries, there are several GLAM projects either on a global, national or regional scale you can contribute to. In some of the projects, the support of GLAM institution employees can make culture and art more accessible for everybody. Find here a selection of GLAM projects you might be interested in:

Sum of all paintings and the list of shared collections

WikiProject Heritage institutions and FindingGLAMs

Structured Data in Wikimedia Commons for GLAM

Austria regional project RegiowikiAT

Links

Europeana Art Collections online Link
UNESCO Digital Library - Open access material for research Link
Museums Online Switzerland Link
Images Archives ETH-Library Link
Online Collection Swiss National Museum Link
Images Archives Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde Link
Portail Joconde, liste officielle des musées de France Link
Projet Wikidata Musées de France Link
Collections Paris Musées Link
Des collections en partage Musée de Bretagne Link
Sculptures de la villa romaine de Chiragan du musée Saint-Raymond-Toulouse(éléments Wikidata déjà existants, ensemble des images à uploader au bas de cette page) Link
Collections des musées de Normandie Link

Contact us!

If you like to contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you need support in the activities for International Museum Day, or you want to learn more about the association, contact the respective chapter directly.

Find the list of contact persons by country in the table below:

WMCH	WMAT	WMDE	WMFR	WMIT
For voluntary community
DE: ulrich.lantermann FR: flor.mechain IT: ilario.valdelli wikimedia.ch	vereinwikimedia.at	kulturwikimedia.de	infowikimedia.fr	infowikimedia.it
For cultural institutions
debora.lopomo wikimedia.ch	raimund.liebert wikimedia.at	holger.plickert wikimedia.de	xavier.cailleau wikimedia.fr	marta.arosio wikimedia.it
For communication and press
kerstin.sonnekalb wikimedia.ch	raimund.liebert wikimedia.at	pressewikimedia.de	pressewikimedia.fr	francesca.ussani wikimedia.it