Digitising Contemporary Art

DCA created a digital body of high-quality reproductions of 26,921 artworks - paintings, photographs, sculptures, installations, videos and 1,857 contextual documents, which are accessible and retrievable through Europeana; not only through the use of metadata and thumbnails, but also direct links to large-sized reproductions of each item. DCA ensured that the rights to all available digital content will be cleared. The content provided, including masterpieces from key artists of most European countries, fill a gap in Europeana‘s content supply.

The main issues addressed within the project are the choice of specifications for digitisation and metadata, so that they are inter-operational, and finding the appropriate aggregation solution for each institution. The exchange with Europeana is the main outcome of the project. DCA‘s digitisation process also contributed to the preservation of the artworks.

The DCA project enhanced the online visibility of contemporary art as an essential expression and an invaluable part of European culture, and to stimulate the interest of the general public by introducing a stronger presence of contemporary art to the Europeana portal.