‘Golf is Art’ brings sporting content from Europeana to new audiences

One of the missions at the core of Europeana is to enable archives, libraries and museums from across Europe to showcase and share their collections online. At Photoconsortium, we believe in the importance of publishing high quality data to enable reuse, following the guidance of the Europeana Publishing Framework. As an accredited Europeana aggregator, we work with Europeana data partners and the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum to make this happen, so that cultural heritage data is aggregated, enriched and shared for others to benefit from.

Exploring all things golf

An example of the immense possibilities for reuse of high quality content comes from Museo della Grafica in Pisa, a long-term partner of Photoconsortium. 

On the occasion of an important golf cup in Pisa, Museo della Grafica organised and is hosting a new exhibition entitled Golf is Art. Immagini e storie di sport, to share golfing history and stories The title of the exhibition recalls Rudyard Kipling’s words (‘Why Golf is Art and Art is Golf / we have not far to seek…’, 1898), and the selection of prints and objects it offers takes visitors through a distinguished and surprising journey, showcasing imagery of golf in arts, literature, fashion and tourism. The exhibition opened on 1 July 2022 and can be visited until September.

The artworks exhibited were selected from private collections in Italy, including prints, posters, drawings and other artifacts related to golf from the early modern age to the present day. 

Incorporating Europeana content

In order to offer the visitors a more international experience, Museo della Grafica decided to include a number of reproductions of artworks sourced from Europeana. 

As the first step, a diligent search was performed on the Europeana website to select prints, posters and photographs about golf from various collections. Photoconsortium also collaborated with the museum’s staff to search for items that offer possibilities of reuse in a public exhibition and which are represented by digital objects of sufficient quality, suitable for print. Photoconsortium also suggested the most appropriate credits for the images that clearly indicate the content holder and the license. The digital files and the full captions were downloaded from Europeana and then printed and framed to be included in the physical exhibition. 

The nine images sourced from Europeana are available in this gallery, with records from Sportimonium, Belgium; Rijksmuseum, Netherlands; KIK-IRPA, Brussels, Belgium; National Art Museum of Catalonia (Catalunya, Spain). 

Professor Alessandro Tosi, The Scientific Director of Museo della Grafica, said, ‘It’s a pleasure and an honor to have the possibility of including such nice resources from Europeana in our exhibition, with support of the Photoconsortium Association who is a dear partner of the Museum and with whom we have collaborated in many events and exhibitions for a long time.’

Collaborations and cultural heritage

Museo della Grafica has hosted events in collaboration with Photoconsortium since 2014, especially focused on showcasing photographic heritage accessible via Europeana. This has included the exhibition from the Europeana Migration project Thousands are Sailing, the BLUE SKIES RED PANIC exhibition about the 1950s, and the recent collection day organised in the framework of the international conference The role of photographic heritage in empowering communities' participation in cultural heritage from the Citizen Heritage project. 

While not yet a content provider to Europeana, Museo della Grafica has been able to share Europeana and its partners’ collections for the valuable reuse of high quality digital cultural heritage. Find out more about sharing data with Europeana.

The exhibition Golf is Art. Immagini e storie di sport is curated by Alessandra Castellani Torta and Alessandro Tosi and will be on display at the Museo della Grafica until 18 September 2022.