LI-MA and SBMK Launch Digital Art Data Workspace

Enhancing accessibility and collaboration for digital art collections

LI-MA, is happy to announce the launch of a Data Workspace for Digital Art in collaboration with the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SBMK). Initiated by the Digital Heritage Network (NDE), this data workspace is established to help museums and heritage organisations make their digital art collections more discoverable, shareable, and accessible. The data workshops will also promote professional development, for example, through courses or instructional videos.

Rethinking Digital Heritage

Not all heritage can be easily digitised. While paintings, documents, or physical objects can be captured and catalogued with relative ease, forms such as performance and digital art resist simple translation. Born-digital works and time-based media evolve continuously, often existing in multiple versions or iterations. Across the heritage network, attention to these less tangible forms of heritage is growing. Effectively describing and connecting metadata, keywords, data models, and persistent identifiers for media artworks requires new approaches and methods that embrace their fluidity while ensuring long-term accessibility and discoverability.

Within a single artwork, both content and form may shift over time, making it challenging to assign a stable identifier, i.e. a fixed reference that allows the work to be reliably cited online. Our approach incorporates this changeability into its data model, enabling sustainable identifiers even for works that continuously evolve.

“Digital art often exists in different editions and series, but also in iterations – repeatedly adapted versions of the same work.” – Joost Dofferhoff (registrar, LI-MA)

A Data Model That Reflects Change

LI-MA has long engaged with these challenges, connecting research on media and digital art with SBMK through the Data Workspace and the Connecting Media Art project. We are developing a data model that accommodates the evolving nature of digital artworks, enabling the assignment of sustainable identifiers that reliably reference works online, even as they change over time. We also monitor the use of AI for archiving. Many institutions already approach LI-MA with such queries. Joost Dofferhoff serves as the main contact, bringing expertise from his roles at LI-MA as registrar and documentalist.

Alongside this, a specialised vocabulary for media- and digital art will be refined next year. Heritage organisations can contribute to its ongoing development, supporting clearer, consistent descriptions across collections.

Connecting Collections, Supporting Creativity

At its core, the Digital Art Data Workspace is a collaborative network. Through workshops, shared data practices, and Linked Open Data, LI-MA and SBMK aim to connect museums and institutions within the Dutch Digital Heritage Network. This approach encourages shared responsibility and knowledge exchange, helping organisations enrich their digital art collections while fostering wider accessibility. Check the calendars of the SBMK, LI-MA, and the NDE for upcoming sessions.

“With the Digital Art Workspace, we aim to bring organisations with digital art collections within the Dutch Digital Heritage Network closer together. Not only practically and technically, by sharing data as linked open data, but also in person through workshops. We will share our knowledge of this specific domain widely within the heritage sector, enabling people to enrich their digital art collections.” – Joost Dofferhoff (registrar, LI-MA)

About SBMK

For more than thirty years, the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (SBMK) has brought together Dutch museums and institutions that care for modern and contemporary art. Through research and knowledge exchange, SBMK helps institutions steward their collections with care and responsibility.

About NDE

The Digital Heritage Network (NDE) fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange across the cultural sector. Comprising organisations, communities, and individuals from across the Netherlands, NDE members contribute to the goals of the National Strategy while tailoring their work on connected heritage to their own expertise and capacities. Governmental bodies support and encourage this networked approach, for example through provincial heritage centers, helping strengthen shared practices and initiatives across the sector.

Header: LI-MA Workshop Digital Infrastructure 2022. Photo by LNDWstudio.