Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago will produce a comprehensive digital image archive of its holdings of visual art from 1945 to the present and will make the results available to the public via an enhanced collections portal on the museum’s website. The project will address a one-time backlog of 700 works that lack adequate digital image records resulting from the museum’s shift from analog to digital image recordkeeping in 2008. It will digitally photograph and catalogue an additional 850 works from the collection. The online archive will make it possible to view the collection at all times and will facilitate the processing of requests relating to research, loans, and reproductions. Desired outcomes for this project include increasing audiences’ knowledge and familiarity with the MCA collection as well as their understanding of regional and international post-war contemporary art history.