CHICO INITIATIVES IN 1995-96
Chico is a multifacted project. The major sub-projects include the Music
Heritage Network, undertaken with the School of Music, the Museum of Art
online exhibits, the Kelsey Museum online tour, and K-12 partnerships with
area schools.
Musical Heritage Network
The Musical Heritage Network
seeks to encourage interest among a broad community of users in the role
of musical instruments as an integral part of culture, to create a digital
resource that is accessible in many contexts by diverse users, and to play
a role in multicultural education and outreach using multimedia technologies.
This digital resource includes information about specific musical instruments
(including photographic images, sound, and video demonstrating performance
technique), as well as cultural information about the context in which the
instrument was used, historical information about its role in diverse communities
and throughout time, and an interactive forum for sharing ideas with other
users.
The centerpiece of the MHN is a virtual tour of the Stearns Collection of
Musical Instruments, an internationally known collection of musical instruments
from diverse cultures and times. The MHN also includes an Educational Commons
which serves as an electronic forum for K-12 students and teachers. School
of Music faculty members and students have worked with CHICO students to
develop this resource.
The MHN has broad participation from a number of units on the University
of Michigan campus and other universities. Scholars in Latin American, Native
American , Chicano literature and music studies are providing photographic,
video and written material. UM scholars are providing multimedia materials
from a research collection in ethnomusicology, as well as expertise in the
use of computers in music. Faculty and students from the School of Art and
Design have assisted with the design of the Web pages.
We are currently developing virtual tours for music in three areas: American
Indian Pow Wow dances, Latin American salsa, and West African music.
UM Museum of Art
Together with UM Museum of Art (UMMA) staff, CHICO team members created
an interactive online site, called the Interpretation Project, that allows
visitors to participate in the ongoing critical interpretation of three
of the Museum's 19th century paintings.
The glories of 16th and 18th century Venetian painting are brought to life
in "Venetian Paintings and Related Works on Paper," an online
exhibit scheduled to complement a showing of twelve paintings from the Sarah
Campbell Blaffer Foundation at the University of Michigan Museum of Art
from September 12, 1996 to January 12, 1997. The online exhibit will also
feature a generous selection of period drawings and prints selected from
the museum's own permanent collection as well as rare book and manuscript
materials loaned from the University Library's Special Collections Division.
Visitors will be treated to a unique recreation of an actual gallery experience
and will have their understanding of the artwork augmented by several essays
about the collection sources and Venetian art that will only be available
at the website. Digital images and related contextual materials will be
used by students in local K-12 schools to enhance art appreciation.
In this project, curators and docents from the UM Museum of Art are working
with CHICO team members to develop the digital resource for the exhibit.
The UMMA resource will be complemented by a site at the UM History of Art
Department which will feature actual Venetian views, streetscapes, palaces,
and squares which viewers can browse in multiple ways.
K-12 Partnerships
CHICO team members are working with teachers, media specialists, and students
from selected high schools and middle schools in Ann Arbor to use resources
developed from the Stearns, Kelsey and Museum of Art projects, supplemented
by additional Web materials, to provide primary resources in the arts and
humanities for learning.
The CHICO team also provides assistance in using the Internet to facilitate
sharing and communication among students with their peers at different sites.
CHICO is helping students in local schools set up an electronic
cultural exchange, by taking advantage of free software which can facilitate
a WWW Board to be used for remote collaboration. Students can set up cultural
heritage Web pages which can be shared with students in other Web sites.
For example, one writing teacher developed an assignment in which students
set up a webpage of "What my cultural history means to me". A
threaded webpage set up at another school allows students to respond to
each others' work, and can include written as well as visual art creations.
We hope that this opportunity of seeing their own multimedia work on the
Internet will stimulate the students' creativity and allow them to share
their work with faraway peers. Students from Ann Arbor area schools are
establishing an electronic cultural exchange with students from a
sister Kellogg project in the Pueblo community of Taos, New Mexico.
Ann Arbor District Library
Librarians from the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) are working with CHICO
team members to showcase CHICO materials and related resources in the arts
and the humanities, and to coordinate these with related materials from
the AADL humanities collections.
Tapping the myriad resources of the Ann Arbor District Library, the AADL
Arts Information Gateway is an innovative service designed to provide
local public library patrons with immediate access to web- based art collections,
museum exhibitions, and community- based arts information resources. The
resource provides direct links to well known works of art and a variety
of connections to sites featuring art resources in the local community.
Links to the world outside take patrons to renowned art, archaeology, and
history museums; inside online museum galleries for special exhibitions;
and to electronic journals, image collections; and artists' works in progress.
In addition, patrons' access to the library's own rich holdings is enhanced
by online access to the library's art rental program, exhibits schedule,
specialized bibliographies, image collections, and information on local
arts organizations. Developed with public librarians for the public library
audience, the AADL Arts Information Gateway will provide a convenient first
step for library patrons interested in exploring both the world around them
and the wealth of art resources within the library.
Kelsey Museum
The Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, located on the UM campus, is another local
collection whose mission includes outreach to diverse audiences. In partnership
with the Kelsey Museum, CHICO is creating a digital exhibit to chronicle
Francis
Kelsey's Near East Expedition of 1919-1920. Visitors to the online exhibit
can experience the stops made by Kelsey and his colleagues to points of
interest across Europe and the Near East. The online resource will also
include contextual materials which supplement the visual images, and will
also be designed for use in K-12 classroom settings.
Art in the Community
CHICO has set up an online
gallery displaying the watercolors of a local artist, with a view towards
featuring the works of local creators in a gallery to be included as part
of the CHICO website.