Constantin Brâncuși Atelier Workshop

Bios + Morphe = Biomorphism


Museum Information Management is the core study to manage museum’s collection. For this project, I created a sculpture collection of museum objects from various online repositories and using Omeka S, which is an open-source content management system, to showcase it. The collection page also compiled descriptive metadata using Metadata Standards Crosswalk to controlled vocabularies to describe the scope and context of the materials.
I chose Biomorphism sculpture as my key research topic and found four representative artists: Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, and Isamu Noguchi. While researching the collection information, metadata of artists and artworks in New York Museums has different standards to control vocabulary in their CMS. So for my collection, I assigned Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) as my guideline to describing the category. I also used Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO), a guide to describing cultural works and their Images. It includes rules and examples for a core subset derived from the CDWA categories and the VRA Core Categories.


CSV collection research list
Metadata Standards Crosswalk


I conducted CSV collection research to find various repositories with data related to my collection and included artists' biography and as many archival artworks. After the research, I identified Resource Template with the metadata fields my collection required. Also, I named convention for the identifier. In order to enrich my collection metadata and make it more consistent, each item is also associated with Item Set with my site in the Omeka System.

This project required me to successfully drive my ability to utilize the best digital and analog practices in advancing information management, particularly collections information. It also addressed the structured Metadata that allows Digital collections in the institutions to make connections more accessible and sustainable, not only for the online users and also for the educators and researchers. Through this project, I now understand the value of the protocols on the use of collection management systems like Omeka in conjunction with a DAM for documenting a museum collection.