Over the summer, the McIntyre Library team started working to digitize the works in the school’s permanent art collection. 

Greg Kocken, head of special collections and archives, and Michelle McMahon, a third-year studio art student, uploaded hundreds of photos to the new online exhibit. McMahon was offered a new student position for curating the digital exhibits. 

McMahon, the new permanent art collection intern, and the new digital collection were made possible by a grant the university received through the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

The new digital collections of the school’s art pieces are available on Omeka, a server accessible through the search tab on the McIntyre Library website. (If you want to find it through the website, go to the search tab on the McIntyre Library and click “art” under “databases by topic.”) 

Besides uploading pictures, one of McMahon’s projects was to curate and research collections based on specific artists.

A couple of notable ones are the Hiroshige prints, Japanese woodblock prints from the 19th century, and prints by Warrington Colescott. Colescott was a modern artist and also a teacher at UW-Madison for several years.

“It was really interesting to research the artists,” McMahon said. 

She also made a digital collection based on the Charli XCX album “BRAT”, which she said started out as an experiment but turned out as a good way to showcase different pieces in the collection.

“I was able to make a connection with popular culture with the ‘BRAT’ pieces,” McMahon said. 

The university has held a permanent collection for many years, but it transferred ownership from Haas Fine Arts Center to the McIntyre Library in 2015. There were plans to digitize the art starting back in the ‘80s. 

UW-Eau Claire has over 800 pieces in the collection. About 20% of those pieces are now online. 

Anna Zook, the arts librarian at UW-Eau Claire, said she sees the digital collection as a way to renew student and faculty interest in the university’s art. 

“I hope it will give the art collection life again on campus,” Zook said. “It should also open up a lot of avenues for researchers.” 

Along with the digital collection, Zook and Eva Peterson, the permanent arts collection manager, are working to organize and care for the physical pieces and create a space for them on the fourth floor of the library.

“What we are doing even fits with Eau Claire’s new mission statement, which focuses on fostering creativity, critical insight, empathy and intellectual courage,” Peterson said.

Besides the art already hanging on the walls of the library and around the campus, the rest of the art in the collection is available to students or faculty for viewing or research. The art is also available for check out and any department can borrow pieces to decorate their building. 

“This is a great way to bring world class art to students,” Zook said. “For example, a business major could be seeing art that they would never be exposed to normally.”

Zook said that most of the art collection even existed because of a few teachers and donors in the past who were passionate about promoting the arts.

“We have high hopes for the revival of the significance of the collection,” Zook said.

Sonnek can be reached at [email protected].