Harnessing the power of art, the Public Art Program of Albuquerque, New Mexico has been funding city-wide art on fire stations, libraries, and parks, with more than 650 pieces scattered across the city. Dynamic sculptures and murals on city buildings may please the eye, but they can also motivate the community.
This interesting and local, at least for us, news was brought to our attention by Government Technology in their article, “Albuquerque Shares Public Art Digitally with Residents.” The leadership of the program manage and promote the public art program with basic technology. They track artwork locations in a FileMaker Pro database, and marketing efforts include posting images and videos to Flickr and Vimeo, as well as displaying art locations on an interactive map.
Technology and public art continue together in the Public Art Archive, a searchable database of descriptive art media in the United States and Canada, which couldn’t exist unless jurisdictions like Albuquerque offered their information electronically.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
