Extreme Makeover: Database Edition

Remember the last time you went to the Georgia Museum of Art?

The refreshingly cool foyer? Being greeted by the front desk security guard? You then made your way upstairs and into the galleries to admire the art. How many works of art do you remember seeing? Fifty? One hundred? Two hundred? The museum has about 500 works on display at any given time—only 5 percent of its total collection. The museum is proud that its permanent collection now consists of more than 12,000 works of art from a wide range of cultures and artists, and it does its best to rotate what is on display regularly, but limited gallery space means it can only display a small fraction of what it owns. That’s where the museum’s registrars have been hard at work.

Over the past few years, the registrars have been implementing a new collections database. This new database replaces the old DOS-based database, which was built in the 1980s and only accessible to some museum staff. The new database, called The Museum System (TMS), is online, and information on more than 2,400 works of art is now accessible to the public, with more being added every day. TMS will not only allow the public to explore the full collection, but will also greatly aid scholars and faculty in their research.

Head registrar Tricia Miller is particularly enthusiastic about the public’s access to the new database, saying, “Better access to information about the museum’s collection is one of the Georgia Museum of Art’s primary goals, and we are so pleased to reach this milestone in the process. I look forward to continuing to make more information about the collection available for students, faculty, scholars and the public to enjoy.”

The process of transferring the information from both the old database and from paper files to the new database is intricate. Basic data transferred from the previous system—such as title, date, artist, medium and dimensions—must be reviewed and corrected for each record before it can be made available to the public. In addition, relevant metadata, such as subject, country of origin or style of art will be added to the records in order to enhance the system’s search capabilities. The process may take several more years before all 12,000 records are made public, but the registrars work every day to make more records available. Additionally, all newly acquired objects will be added to the system on an ongoing basis.

Not everything in the system has a photograph attached to it. The registrars have been taking snapshots of new objects when they enter the collection for some years, but many works that were acquired earlier have not been imaged. It is the registrars’ hope to find funding to document the entire collection photographically at some point.

The public can access TMS through the collections page on the museum’s website (georgiamuseum.org), which presents several options. You may view collections of highlighted works (African, American, European, Asian and decorative arts for now). You may view the works by category (print, painting, drawing, photograph, etc.). You may view all works alphabetically, by date or by object number, if you just want to browse. You can also search a word—for example, “bird,” which will return works relating to birds. These specifications are what make this new database so efficient, cutting out the need to spend hours going through files to find exactly what you may be looking for.

Another revolutionary function of TMS is that it allows visitors to sign in and create a folder of their favorite images, called “My Collection.” This feature allows people to play curator, creating their own online “exhibition” and forging a personal connection to the collection. These collections can be kept private or made public to share with other users on the site.

So the next time you find yourself mindlessly surfing the Internet, take a minute to examine the new database. You may find a work that inspires you, examine the career of a local artist or bask in the glory of a master of American impressionism. You never know what you’ll find.

Stephanie Motter
Intern, Department of Communications

Lamar Dodd

No visitor to the University of Georgia, or, in fact, the state of Georgia, can avoid seeing the name Lamar Dodd plastered in all kinds of locations: The Lamar Dodd School of Art (University of Georgia), The Lamar Dodd Art Center (LaGrange College), Lamar Dodd Professional Chair (a real job title), and even "Light one for Lamar" (a real anti-smoking ban protest). With his name being such a part of Georgia vernacular, Lamar Dodd’s actual identity eludes many – wealthy benefactor? Ancient regent?

Lamar Dodd at the Georgia Museum of Art

Dodd is actually one of the South’s most important and influential artists, contributing more than just his name to buildings, schools, and strange protests. His paintings are held in the collections of the Smithsonian, the Whitney, and Metropolitan Museum of Art – and of course at the Georgia Museum of Art – as exemplary pieces of Southern art. He enjoyed commissions from the likes of NASA, and his prolific output still permeates Southern culture, and particularly the Athens community, which Dodd made his home until his death in 1996.

Dodd’s beginnings are rooted in the region. He studied architecture at Georgia Tech, and then taught for a while in Alabama, but finding his greatest interest in painting and developing his own practice, he headed to New York in the late 1920s/early 1930s. This was a wise move – his stylized scenes of Southern landscapes and daily lives charmed New York crowds. Often dark in color, and with heavy black shadows, Dodd’s paintings of the American south appear sombre, yet romantic. This combination led to his first solo show in the city in 1932, and toward a name for introducing a renaissance in Southern art. He soon won the Norman Walt Harris Prize for his painting, “Railroad Cut,” which is now on display at the Georgia Museum of Art. 

Lamar Dodd, "North of Pratt City"

Following this, Dodd was invited to become the artist-in-residence at the University of Georgia, and so gladly returned to Georgia, and the South, to make art and advocate for its inclusionary sharing. He began giving lectures and teaching painting, and was appointed head of an essentially non-existent art department at the university. He expanded its programs, introducing more classes and a variety of courses, funded scholarships, saw the opening of the Georgia Museum of Art, and founded the Cortona Study Abroad program that is still enjoyed by students today, growing the art school until it was the biggest and most influential in the South. He retired in 1967, 16 years after the original residency program that was only intended to last a year. However, Dodd's legacy doesn't just lie with the school – he never ceased painting throughout these years, and exhibitions of his work continue today. The Monehegan Museum in Maine is currently showing a series of his works in an exploration of his 'artistic history.'

Lamar Dodd is an excellent figurehead for our institution as a great leader of the concept that we still work toward today – art for everyone. His name is proudly used to reflect the values that he instilled in (what he didn't know would become) the Lamar Dodd School of Art, and that they maintain in his memory. The school was renamed after him in 1994, not long before Dodd's passing, in celebration and tribute to his contributions to Southern art and its community, and you can visit the Georgia Museum of Art to see some of the paintings from the beginning of this great movement.

Ben Shahn at the GMOA

I wrote about Cy Twombly and his new work at the Louvre. As of late, I’ve been very interested in Black Mountain College and the artists this institution that thrived in the 1950s produced, and it turns out Twombly participated in the program when it was rife with brilliant minds, including Willem de Kooning, Merce Cunningham and John Cage. Twombly’s break from the Minimalist, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionist wave during the ‘50s and ‘60s is quite impressive and adds a touch of independence and distinctiveness to his pieces. The same strand of artistic sovereignty resonates in the work of his fellow Black Mountain College schoolmate and art pioneer Ben Shahn. I’m interested in Shahn because, first, like Twombly, he broke away from the dominant art movements of the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. Second, the museum owns four of his works, all overflowing with social and political implications.

Ben Shahn was born in Kovos, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, and with his mother and two siblings immigrated to the United States after his father was implicated in a scandal and exiled to Siberia. Shahn was not drawn to the the minimalist, Pop and Abstract Expressionist themes in modern art but instead became enraptured with socio-political issues and could not help but infuse his passion into his work. His paintings, drawings and prints are examples of social realism, a strand of art that depicts brutally honest subjects with the intent of unraveling social and economic injustices and truths. Social realism was especially widespread during the Great Depression, when artists like Dorothea Lange and Walt Kuhn documented the horrors of a penniless government and peoples—dirty children crying, mothers gripping their desperate children, hunger-stricken beggars, etc. Shahn won the attention of Diego Rivera in 1932, who asked him to assist in a mural in Rockefeller Center in New York City (which elicited great controversy for its depiction of Vladimir Lenin). Americans were outraged at the communist messages in the mural, and it was quickly destroyed. The government also asked Shahn to participate in making art for the New Deal, and he accompanied Lange and other photographers to document southern life during the Depression. We are incredibly lucky to have works by Shahn, and even more so to have works that illustrate such powerful scenes and events.

One work of Shahn’s the museum owns is a print of his portrait of Martin Luther King Jr., which Time magazine published on its cover in 1965.

Below, Shahn's "Sunday Morning", part of our collection

"The Clinic" , also part of our collection