15
N°II 2024 MuseoMag
DIGITAL DATA
can help us answer questions such as how has the
Kutter collection grown over time? What percentage
are paintings and what percentage are drawings?
Which works were exhibited in what exhibition?
Which works were exhibited often, which have not
been exhibited at all? How many of the works on
show were part of the museum’s collection at the
time, and how many works on show in each exhibi-
tion are part of the museum’s collection today? The
answers to these questions can be analysed and in-
terpreted, telling us more about both Kutter’s and the
Nationalmusée’s history.
THE MAGIC OF METADATA
The data on Kutter that we need to answer these and
many other questions has been gathered and enco-
ded as part of our ongoing effort to publish our col-
lections online on MNAHA Collections. You can find
our entire Kutter collection on there and each work
is described by selected metadata, i.e., the type of
work, dimensions and medium, but also the date and
method of acquisition. Since Kutter’s works are in the
public domain you can download high-resolution
images of his works, zoom in closely and analyse his
technique or even print them out and hang them on
your walls.
Because objects are much more telling when they
are put into context, we didn’t just encode data
about individual works, but we linked them to the ex-
hibitions they were a part of. As a part of our efforts
to both better understand our collection and our ins-
titutional history, we have started to publish our past
exhibitions on MNAHA Collections. For each exhibi-
tion we try to reconstruct the physical exhibition as
far as we can by assembling the works from our col-
lection that were exhibited, the exhibition catalogue,
scans of installation views – if they exist – and a re-
ference to our archive, where more, not yet digitised
documents can be found and requested. As such,
the digital platform doesn’t question the importance
of archival research, but rather offers an accessible
tool that facilitates substantive preliminary research.
MNAHA Collections is designed to display the works,
their data and context in a way that is intuitive and
easy to read. However, the data is not necessarily
presented in a form that someone who doesn’t have
the necessary technical skills can easily make use
of. To make it more accessible, we have decided to
publish thematic datasets on the data sharing plat-
form of the Luxembourg state – data.public.lu. The
first dataset is on the works of Joseph Kutter in our
collection and their exhibition history. It is the same
one I will be using to prepare the talk Lis Hausemer
and I will give on Kutter’s reception at the National-
musée in July. We will use both methods described
above to look at how the museum both canonised
Kutter and used him as a symbol of national identity.
Edurne Kugeler
Be sure to sign up for the talk
De Joseph Kutter an der Geschicht
vum Nationalmusée with Edurne Kugeler and
Lis Hausemer on 4 July at 6 pm,
organised as part of our exhibition
Dem Kutter seng Gesiichter.
Nei Facettë vun eiser Sammlung.