Digitization Case Study: Allen Sapp Gallery

The Allen Sapp Gallery is a public gallery housing "The Gonor Collection", an extensive collection of art by renowned Cree artist Allen Sapp. In addition to Sapp's art, the gallery houses an extensive archive consisting of slides, videos and photographs that effectively chronicles, not only the career of Allen Sapp, but also the day-to-day life, history and culture of his people, the Northern Plains Cree.

Purpose of Digitization
The Allen Sapp Gallery’s interest in digitization resulted primarily from the five to six thousand images in its collection. Only 242 are original paintings appropriate for exhibition. The remainder, because of their format (slides, photos and video), did not lend themselves to exhibitions and public access. It was the curator’s opinion that the full possibilities of the Allen Sapp story could be achieved by presenting his originals in the broader context of the contents of the archives. Digitization was the most effective means of achieving this.

With the emergence of the Virtual Museum of Canada Investment Program, the opportunity presented itself to create a project that would allow the gallery to not only digitize but more effectively serve its mandate, making the collection and its meaning far more accessible to the public.

The digital project designed within the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) criteria was an ambitious one, and the first priority was to ensure that the project would have a broad base of application that enabled the gallery to effectively create exhibitions, publications, and promotional material with all the possibilities offered by digital imaging and digital interpretation.

Planning for the Project
The gallery director and computer support technician attended a Museums Association of Saskatchewan (M.A.S.) digitization workshop six months in advance of the project. The workshop provided the gallery staff with an orientation to planning for digitization and digitization equipment.

Planning for the project meant assessing both the Virtual Museum of Canada investment criteria and the gallery's needs. This resulted in decisions as to what the gallery would do in-house and what would be outsourced. It also enabled an informed decision as to what would be needed in terms of the purchase of digitization hardware and software (i.e. scanners, cameras, software, etc.).

Writing the Virtual Museum of Canada proposal forced the gallery to be far more specific and concrete in terms of planning, time frames, who would do what, partners, etc. Writing a proposal and selling it to a third party requires the discipline of considering all angles (even this did not result in the most effective kind of planning).

The gallery director and the technical staff undertook the overall project planning. As the gallery only has three positions (full-time director, part-time gift shop/archives/computer support staff and part-time education staff), two consultants were hired to assist the gallery in the development of the Virtual Museum of Canada proposal.

Description of Project
In 2001 the Allen Sapp Gallery entered into a contract with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) to create a virtual exhibition for the Virtual Museum of Canada. The Allen Sapp Gallery houses the permanent collection of the art of Allen Sapp (242 original paintings, 4000 slides of all the work of his career). Because Sapp's work is a chronicle of the day to day life experience of the Northern Plains Cree, the gallery set out to approach the digitization of their collection from a daily life perspective.

The gallery began by acknowledging that the true value of Sapp's work was not limited exclusively to its significance as art, but its full significance lies in understanding that somehow Sapp has been given the gift of "keeper of images" for his people. The power of his art is therefore fully discovered in understanding the meaning it holds for his people.

Allen Sapp himself is not a talkative man, but it became abundantly clear that his gift as an artist and "story keeper of images" combined with elders, who themselves were gifted as story keepers in the tradition of oral history, is a powerful combination. Needless to say, what is unique about the gallery’s approach to digitization has been the emphasis on digitizing the "keepers of the stories" "the people". Thus the project was developed with a different perspective than most on-line exhibits.

Following the peoples’ lead, the gallery then determined which objects and paintings needed to be digitized in order to place their (Allen Sapp and elders) reflections in the context of the images that inspired them. These approaches to creating digital content will contribute substantially to the VMC on-line exhibition “Through the Eyes of the Cree” presently under development. Interactive kiosks within the gallery and a gallery exhibit will also complement the on-line exhibit.

The on-line exhibition will consist of the following:

• the art of Allen Sapp
• black and white archival photographs of the Northern Plains Cree at the turn of the century
• artifacts or replicas related to the content of the images
• commentary and additional images in digital video from elders that will provide a more meaningful context to the paintings, photos, and objects.

Commentary will be accessed from interactive kiosks that will appear as a painting on the wall, interspersed throughout the exhibition. The theme of the exhibition will be based upon the elders recounting their own history and stories as inspired by Sapp's work.

The work the gallery hopes to include will deal with:

• the Allen Sapp story - his childhood
• Allen Sapp’s rise as an artist
• the Cree way - beliefs and values / the old way
• the land and the people
• breaking the land - the treaties
• reserve life
• farming and agriculture
• wisdom of the elders - how the past informs the future

What was Digitized
It was the view of the gallery director that the digitization of the collection had to include the following:

• Audio and video digital interviews with Sapp about his life and work.
• Audio and video digital interviews with elders about Sapp's work.
• Digital recordings of Sapp singing and drumming.
• Digital recordings of Sapp's story (narrative track) as recorded by Canadian actor Gordon Tootoosis.
• Digital still photographs taken at all recording sessions.
• Digital scans of 600 selected slides of Sapp's paintings.
• Digital scans of 200 photographs and slides about Sapp and the gallery.
• Digital photographs of objects and paintings not in slide or positive form.
• Digitization of VHS footage.
• Digitization of laser disc footage.

The premise that motivated this extensive approach to digitization was that the value of digitization lies not in its electronic format but in its flexibility (multiple functions) and its capacity to effectively lend itself to the primary function of telling a story (which is the purpose of collecting objects).

The story, however, comes not from the objects but from the keepers of the story (the people). To have audio/video and images in digital format opens up endless possibilities.

Duration of the Project
The duration of the project will be one and a half years from beginning to end. The gallery is presently at a mid-way point (March 2002).

Investment
Investment was provided by the Virtual Museum of Canada and "in kind" contributions from the following partners:

• City of North Battleford
• Battleford Community Cable, now Access Communications
• Abyss Multi Media

Costs involved the purchase of equipment for in-house production (digital camera, flatbed and slide scanner plus software). Digital audio/video productions, web production and some digital scanning were outsourced.

• Digital photos and slides:
• Tiff at 1.25 to 1.5 MB.
• Jpg at 50 KB
• Jpg at 4 KB thumbnail
• Digital video and audio: Sony 32Khz, 12 bit, 3 chip, 44Khz, 16 bit

All objects were categorized before digitization. However, the interviews (audio/video) with the elders created the biggest challenge with respect to cataloging and creating a database. In order to storyboard and have the ability to future reference the material, the gallery needed to translate (from Cree to English to French and vice versa) the interviews and then break them into categories and topics. This would allow them to program the information into a database and provide searching capabilities in order to access the video footage and build the storyboard.

The gallery has formal copyright agreements for most of the photography and video footage in its collection.

With respect to the art of Allen Sapp, the gallery had functioned with an informal agreement (not written) up to this point, basically a gentlemen’s agreement. The project created the imperative to formalize it (which was good). The effort to put into writing the full extent of the copyright issues in question and formalize a comprehensive, long-term agreement has posed many more challenges than the gallery had anticipated (e.g. formalizing a copyright agreement, wording of the agreement, etc).

The documentation of metadata was not entered into the Collections Management System and the gallery has to assume responsibility for it all.

The selection of what and how the gallery would digitize was built on the premises that the gallery would work toward eventually digitizing the entire collection. This project (Virtual Museum of Canada) would be the first step.

The criteria for the work was to select work that, if digitized, would lend itself to the broadest possible application.

The entire permanent collection (only 242 pieces) was digitized due to its possibilities for collection management, exhibitions, digital video production, publications, web site development, etc. Slides of the artist's work were selected based on quality and diversity, and their ability to represent the full extent of Allen Sapp’s painting career.

The process of outsourcing some of the slide scanning was meant to allow the gallery to get the process started (600 scans at first). Also, the gallery purchased a Nikon 2000 scanner and Dimage 7 Minolta Digital Camera to enable digitization of the remaining 5000 images in the collection over the next few years.

Images were named with accession numbers and arranged in a digital file system that corresponded to the order of the accession file used at the gallery. These files were also organized based on the different topics that were determined and would be used in the video development. All master files and three working copies were burned to CD (Kodak Gold). A hard copy of the thumbnail page was created to accompany each CD for visual reference. All CDs were numbered and placed in a CD storage catalogue with the accompanying thumbnail binders.

Areas of Concern
Many issues and concerns arose while working on this project. The primary concerns were:

• The contracts were not specific enough in terms of details and responsibilities (re: digital outsourcing).
• Incremental time lines were not attached to the contracts.
• It was assumed that formalizing a written copyright agreement would be simple (it was not).
• Web site and video production people can lose you in technical jargon but they don't always know what they are talking about.
• Obtain samples from contractors of previous work and samples of how they would do your project is highly recommended.
• One expert to fit all is a bad approach.
• The range of skills and knowledge needed using advanced and diverse technology in this project means you should be cautious of individual or production companies that tell you they can do it all.
• Make sure the institution owns all raw footage (copyright, etc.) and that it is in non-proprietary format.
• Collect images and/or data on the hard drive until you have enough to fill a CD.
• Facilitate a meeting with contractors and production people so they can speak to each other about their needs in technical jargon. Make sure in the end you get it down in "English".
• Ensure you include a termination clause in any contracts for non-performance.

Written by: Dean Bauche, Director, Allen Sapp Gallery
Edited by: CHIN