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Playlist "Reinstating Female Artists to the Cultural Record via Wikidata"

Reinstating Female Artists to the Cultural Record via Wikidata

Heinz-Günter Kuper

In 2016 the Stadtmuseum Berlin hosted a temporary exhibition entitled "Berlin – Stadt der Frauen". The exhibition comprised works by female artists, who had enjoyed prominence in the past, but had subsequently been ignored by the male-dominated academy. As a result, these artists are underrepresented in the literature and rarely mentioned in secondary sources, which presents a challenge: How does one satisfy Wikidata’s notability criteria, when little supporting documentation exists and the artist’s notability has (only) been established by a cultural heritage institution? See this exchange for an example of the problems that can arise.
Objects from the exhibition were digitised under the auspices of a publicly funded programme. Data from this project has been uploaded into Wikidata as part of a test case. The presentation will detail the process and address the issues encountered, as well as make some suggestions for the future.