Thomas William Roberts, Ulverstone Beach, 1931, oil on canvas on composition board. Purchased with funds from the Launceston Museum and Art Gallery Foundation, 2008 (detail).
The Queen Victoria Art Gallery in Launceston has announced that they have digitised 684 paintings and made them available online. The collection strengths are described on their website as Tasmanian Colonial Art (this collection documents the artistic heritage of Tasmania through paintings, works on paper and sculpture), Modern and Contemporary Australian Art (this collection documents the history of Australia’s postcolonial art of aesthetic value through paintings, works on paper, sculpture and multi-media, and, International Art (a small but significant collection of international paintings and works on paper). The online collection is mainly focused on Australian art, with a small number of European paintings.
It is great to see regional museums being supported to digitise collections that are often less well-known compared to our national and state galleries, and this will no doubt be a useful tool for a variety of researchers.
On a quick examination the interface is at times rather difficult to load (having tried on several browsers), and a bit clunky to use, but this might hopefully be updated at some point. The fact that the images have been digitised and made available is great and QVMAG curators should be applauded for their work making this publicly available.
You can access the online collection here: http://qvmag.cms.dedicated1.autech.com.au/qvmag/index.php?c=387
Press release
Ambitious project provides world-wide access to QVMAG collection
The Queen Victoria Art Gallery Visual Arts Department has taken an exciting leap into the online digital world going live on a new website today, Friday 4 November 2016.
Paintings from the Collection, is an online portal of collection information featuring photographs and information for 684 oil paintings from the collection.
Each photograph is accompanied by information including the artist, title, date, measurements and media of the work, and how the work was acquired.
Project Coordinator and Queen Victoria Art Gallery Curator of 20th Century Australian Art, Bridget Arkless, said the new database will make information about our paintings accessible in a way we could not have imagined even a few years ago. ‘Technological advances are so rapid and are impacting on almost all aspects of our lives. These impacts are also being felt by curators, whose responsibility it is not only to research and record information about the collections they care for, but also to make this information available to as broad an audience as possible,” says Bridget. “This is the first stage in an ambitious project to ensure the collection is truly accessible to a worldwide audience.”
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Collections and Research Manager, Martin George said our intention is to make it possible for our audience to access our entire collection of art works electronically. “We know that this digitised information about our collections will be a valuable resource for both the QVMAG and our audiences, and we can only imagine the extent that it will be used in the future,” says Martin. “The important first step has been taken, and it will be fascinating to see how the public responds to this enhanced access.” The project is a collaboration between Curators Yvonne Adkins and Bridget Arkless; Information Technology Coordinator Mark Gordon; and Graphic Designer Renée Singline.
The project has been fully funded by the Gordon Darling Foundation