Wikidata talk:WikiProject Museums

Discussion

Subject of a museum

Tubezlob VIGNERON Jane023 Pigsonthewing Ambrosiani Spinster Wittylama Fuzheado Emijrp Daniel Mietchen Marsupium Martingggg Anne-LaureM Beat Estermann Manu1400 Mauricio V. Genta Patafisik MartinPoulter Tris T7 BeatrixBelibaste Clifflandis Mrtngrsbch Reciproque Weadock313 (talk) 21:56, 27 November 2019 (UTC) ProtoplasmaKid Crowjane7 Scarey1 (talk) 11:55, 9 February 2021 (UTC) Zblace Suna no onna Maxime Ravel Antoine2711 S.v.Mering

Notified participants of WikiProject Museums

Hello everybody! Thank you for joining the project!

We have a lot of subclasses of museum (Q33506) (here). Can we have a qualifier for the subject of museum (Q33506)? Like instance of (P31)museum (Q33506)main subject (P921)archaeology (Q23498). Maybe it's a very bad idea, I don't know. What do you think? --Tubezlob (🙋) 14:46, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

That's fine, but there are lots of biographical museums that include archeology as well as art, so we need more than just "main subject". Maybe "has part" and then name the collections? They can have main subjects or descriptions, etc. This would work better I think for some of the larger municipal museums that are often aggregated from various smaller local museums. --Jane023 (talk) 17:55, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

@Jane023: Sorry, I don't understand "and then name the collections" (my English is not very good). It's an item like Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre (Q3044751) or the subject (like art (Q735))? --Tubezlob (🙋) 19:46, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes exactly. So Louvre "has part" Department of Near Eastern Antiquities of the Louvre (Q3044751) as well as Department of Paintings of the Louvre (Q3044768). If the collections don't exist, then make those and add them to the museum item. Many municipal museums have multiple collections, and similarly, many art museums receive collections as whole bequests and should be also added separately to Wikidata, though all of it is art. Jane023 (talk) 12:38, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

@Jane023: OK. And for little museums that have only one or two subject, we can use this instance of (P31)museum (Q33506)main subject (P921)archaeology (Q23498)? If it's yes, we can maybe use a bot to replace instance of (P31)archaeological museum (Q3329412) by instance of (P31)museum (Q33506)main subject (P921)archaeology (Q23498). — Tubezlob (🙋) 11:12, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

OK now I understand what you mean. You want all museums to just have one unique instance of (P31) the way we do for paintings? I agree this is a good approach and qualifiers can do the rest. Jane023 (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes. All museums have the item museum (Q33506) and a qualifier (main subject (P921) for the subject). With this method, we will not have to create new items for subject (like archaeological museum (Q3329412)). --Tubezlob (🙋) 11:49, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Tubezlob VIGNERON Jane023 Pigsonthewing Ambrosiani Spinster Wittylama Fuzheado Emijrp Daniel Mietchen Marsupium Martingggg Anne-LaureM Beat Estermann Manu1400 Mauricio V. Genta Patafisik MartinPoulter Tris T7 BeatrixBelibaste Clifflandis Mrtngrsbch Reciproque Weadock313 (talk) 21:56, 27 November 2019 (UTC) ProtoplasmaKid Crowjane7 Scarey1 (talk) 11:55, 9 February 2021 (UTC) Zblace Suna no onna Maxime Ravel Antoine2711 S.v.Mering

Notified participants of WikiProject Museums

What do you think about that?

I think that it's difficult to add instance of (P31) under the current system.

— Tubezlob (🙋) 12:24, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Add properties: opening hours, entrance fees

hi,

to really become useful for museums & tourism sites, Wikidata should have visit-centric properties like opening hours, entrance fees. Used with qualifiers (dates, different types of visitors) they should work fine. Then, it becomes possible to query for instance "museums in Stockholm open right now". What do you think? Ambrosiani (talk) 16:55, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ambrosiani: For opening hours, I think it's impossible : the hour is actually a proposition. For entrance fees, we can maybe use price (P2284) with qualifier for age. For the moment, any museum item use that, but it's a great idea! --Tubezlob (🙋) 20:03, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Great idea, could be useful for Wikivoyage too.

Right now and weirdly, price (P2284) is only for «  médicament medication (Q12140) and medical procedure (Q796194) » in « United States dollar (Q4917) and Danish krone (Q25417) »... !?! Maybe we should ask for expanding the scope of price (P2284), finding an other property (fee (P2555) ?) or asking for creation of a new one.

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 21:59, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I think we could use fee (P2555). Perhaps we should add this to a few museums and then raise the topic in the project chat to get a wider response? Ambrosiani (talk) 08:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ambrosiani, VIGNERON: I modified the scope of price (P2284) because on the discussion page, the creator said that it's OK. But now, how can we write the age ranges? Wich qualifier? Example: Louvre Museum (Q19675)price (P2284)15 euroapplies to part (P518)? We should create items for the age: "people over 18", "people under 18", etc. ? --Tubezlob (🙋) 08:26, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Awesome! I think we should use qualifiers yes. I haven't found a good one though, preferably we should have something like "age:from 0 to 18" or similar. Ambrosiani (talk) 08:34, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Age	Q number
age: from 0 to 18	TODO
age: over 18	TODO
age: over 60	TODO
student	student (Q48282)
teacher	teacher (Q37226)
large family	large family (Q838293) (or family (Q8436)?)
disabled person	TODO

Or maybe we can just have "full price" and "reduced rate". What do you think about that? --Tubezlob (🙋) 09:13, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ambrosiani, VIGNERON: I did some research and I noticed that there are no rules for ages: 13 to 18, 12 to 18, 60+, 65+, etc. I think that use "full price" and "reduced rate" is better and easier. We can't make an item for each case. Or maybe we can use propreties to define the lowest age and the highest age. It is a difficult subject. --Tubezlob (🙋) 10:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

I created full price (Q23901795) and reduced price (Q23901802). --Tubezlob (🙋) 11:10, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

See, for example, Museum–aquarium of Nancy (Q3330862) --Tubezlob (🙋) 11:16, 23 April 2016 (UTC)

Nice! Let's use this to start with. Ambrosiani (talk) 11:50, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ambrosiani: For not having the ±1, you can change the "1" with a "0" or, when you write, you can type "+-0". It's usefull — Tubezlob (🙋) 15:38, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Nice! I've been wondering about that ±1 :) thank you! Ambrosiani (talk) 07:19, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

@Ambrosiani: There are discussions in connection with this topic (properties for Wikivoyage): Wikidata:Property proposal/Sister projects#Wikivoyage — Tubezlob (🙋) 14:04, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Resource: Wikidata museum map

To get a quick overview of how many basic facts (location, website, number of visitors) have been added to museums, I made a map a while ago. The source code is available as well of you want to change the query for instance. Ambrosiani (talk) 16:59, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It's a cool and motivational tool! VIGNERON introduced me to it a few days ago. It's cool for the stats too. I have just a question: when the item has no coordinates, it doesn't show in the map, or you use the located in the administrative territorial entity (P131) or location (P276)? --Tubezlob (🙋) 20:13, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It isn't shown on the map if there's nothing in coordinate location (P625). I just added a link in the infobox to find all museums without coordinates in the country you're viewing. Ambrosiani (talk) 12:39, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ambrosiani !

That a über-cool tool !

Just some questions/remarks:

• when a country is selected (like France) could the label be in the local/main langage (like French) ? (unfortunately I can't code...)
• this tool assume that every museum should have coordinates but when there is two elements, one for the instution and one for the building (eg. Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes (Q3098373) in palais universitaire de Rennes (Q21884142) or Grimaldi-Castle Museum (Q23780901) in Château Grimaldi (Q2967890) ; by the way, I'm not sure what is the best way to structure the relation between the two items but that's another question), I think it make more sense to only put the coordinates once on the building, no?

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 22:08, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't know which coordinate is fetched, I'm just requesting coordinate location (P625) and hoping for the best :) In the best of worlds, museums with more than one location should be added on all different sites. Usually (example: Imperial War Museums (Q23315190)) there are separate wikidata objects for the different buildings even when they're part of the same institution.

I'll see what I can do about the labels – probably the best way is to fetch the labels themselves from Wikidata so there's no duplicate work translating everything.

Oh, and the coordinates. Right now the museums without coordinates are not shown at all. I'll add a link to a list so people can easily find the museums without coordinates and add a location. Ambrosiani (talk) 08:23, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Employees of museums

For some Dutch museums, I have added properties between (ex-)directors and (ex-)employees and museums they used to work for. In that way we can get a list of former directors for instance, if they are notable. These are not properties of a museum, but properties of a person. Example:

• In the Reasonator view of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam you see a history of former and current directors and employees
• Example of a Dutch art historian who has worked for various museums, often as director: Rudi Fuchs (Q873279)

This won't apply to all museums but I think it's quite interesting and useful to add this info to Wikidata if we have it! Spinster (talk) 18:31, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

For the moment, we have director / manager (P1037) but it's just for the curator. Maybe we should create a proprety "employee", the inverse of employer (P108). --Tubezlob (🙋) 09:19, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The complex history/evolution of a museum's name

@Fuzheado: I moved your question here, it's a better place. --Tubezlob (🙋) 11:41, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

How does one capture the complex history/evolution of a museum's name in Wikidata? Example: en:Computer_History_Museum#History -- Fuzheado (talk) 02:52, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

@Fuzheado: I think we can use:

• ⟨ subject ⟩ official name (P1448) ⟨ 1st name ⟩
  start time (P580) ⟨ year1 ⟩
  end time (P582) ⟨ year2 ⟩
• ⟨ subject ⟩ official name (P1448) ⟨ 2nd name ⟩
  start time (P580) ⟨ year1 ⟩
  end time (P582) ⟨ year2 ⟩
• etc.

— Tubezlob (🙋) 15:25, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I'd propose to model Museum of Romanticism (Q6974501) the same way. Currently its old name has an item on its own, Museo Romántico (Q24249987), I'd move the information to the Q6974501 and merge Q24249987 to it. I found the item because it appears here as a constraint violation. @Strakhov: --Marsupium (talk) 19:38, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not ok with that. I'm more into "different identifiers, different items". If Biblioteca Nacional de España (Q750403) considers Museo Romántico an entity disolved in 2009 and continued by "Museo del Romanticismo" (Nota del catalogador: Continuado desde el 2009 por el Museo del Romanticismo) [1]. I think we should not merge both items. If you wanna create a (new) 'superitem' covering both periods, it's up to you, of course. Strakhov (talk) 19:47, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Museum as organization vs. Museum as location

Some museums are housed in former palaces notable before the museum started, or they are located in multiple locations. Most often the museum is purpose-built and is one item. Do we need to explain when to use more than one item for the museum itself? Jane023 (talk) 17:00, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

When ingesting data about Swiss heritage institutions, I found it useful to clearly distinguish between the museum (as an organization, institution, collection) and the building. There are indeed historical buildings that are called "Museum something". However, they may not house that museum anymore. Take for example Natural History Museum of Basel (Q1464029): Museum an der Augustinergasse, Basel. The item describes a building and a former museum; the building is now used by another museum. By distinguishing the organization and the buildings, it should be fairly easy to model multiple locations or to allow for different labels for the organization and the building. --Beat Estermann (talk) 07:19, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Fine - all we need is an answer to the preceeding question. Given that this is a volunteer project with myself as guinea pig, how to propose modelling such things over time? Just as on Commons we first upload the image without a category and then once we have about 3 or 4 things pointing to the same place we might create a category, and then years later make it an "institution" with a picture of the facade and give it an institution template, we need some sort of growth model on Wikidata. Right now I link to any part of the collection I can, in some instances just to the former owner of something. Much much later I might create an item for the collection etc. We can't just superimpose some collection database onto Wikidata; we must come up with a step-by-step growth model. Jane023 (talk) 08:01, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Not sure whether I'm getting you 100%. Your question was: "Do we need to explain when to use more than one item for the museum itself?". Well, maybe. In an ideal world: no, as this would be directly done by means of the definitions we provide. Thus, one of the first things I would do is to fix the definition of "museum" by removing the statement subclass of "architectural structure". I thought I had already done that before, but it seems not (I have done it just now). Now, obviously the definitions in some of the languages are erroneous (eg. Italian: "struttura espositiva di oggetti"; for many languages the definition is ok, but there are several languages on there which I don't understand; the Dutch definition also seems a bit out of sync with the rest, by the way). - So, what we need in my opinion is a place to discuss this kind of clarifications and the coordination of definitions. For this, we will probably need to create links from the given concept items to the WikiProject pages where issues are to be discussed. In addition, we will need to start integrating the various WikiProjects, maybe by starting to integrate all the cultural heritage related WikiProjects; common issues should move up to the level that is most appropriate to discuss them.

Regarding the logic of progression, I think I/we would need to give it some further thought. I guess we are presently all starting somewhere and gradually discovering challenges and inconsistencies on our way as we move on. At some point, we will need to pull our first experiences together and hopefully reach some higher level of coordination. For now, I'm also just making my first steps as a "guinea pig" when it comes to ingesting heritage data into Wikidata.

In case you would find it helpful to first ingest all the heritage institutions in a given country (e.g. The Netherlands), let me know - I do have pretty much complete lists of GLAMs for about 10 countries. --Beat Estermann (talk) 08:26, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Tubezlob VIGNERON Jane023 Pigsonthewing Ambrosiani Spinster Wittylama Fuzheado Emijrp Daniel Mietchen Marsupium Martingggg Anne-LaureM Beat Estermann Manu1400 Mauricio V. Genta Patafisik MartinPoulter Tris T7 BeatrixBelibaste Clifflandis Mrtngrsbch Reciproque Weadock313 (talk) 21:56, 27 November 2019 (UTC) ProtoplasmaKid Crowjane7 Scarey1 (talk) 11:55, 9 February 2021 (UTC) Zblace Suna no onna Maxime Ravel Antoine2711 S.v.Mering

Notified participants of WikiProject Museums

I think that, ideally, we should have an item for the building and one for the organization for each museum. A lot of museums are located in historic monuments (for example Château Grimaldi (Q2967890) and Grimaldi-Castle Museum (Q23780901), the second item has the property location (P276) with the first). It should be noted that Wikipedia as often just one article.

In my mind, a museum subject should not have coordinate location (P625), but just location (P276).

So I think we should write it on the project page. Are you OK with that? Tubezlob (🙋) 12:47, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Not 100 % sure but here my two cents : I think having two items is probably the best and clearest way to do it.

This is what I did with the two main museums in my city (Rennes (Q647)) : Museum of Brittany (Q3329701) in Les Champs Libres (Q3231356) (I had too as there is several independent institutions in this building) and Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes (Q3098373) in palais universitaire de Rennes (Q21884142) (idem, several independent institutions occupied the building over time). In fact, right now, I can't think of a single « purpose-built museum » (except obvious modern exceptions like Louvre-Lens (Q405543) but they are exceptions).

For the « in » relation, I'm not sure which is best between location (P276) (very general) and headquarters location (P159) (or both ? or an other property ?) ; occupant (P466) is more clear as the inverse property.

Cdlt, VIGNERON (talk) 13:12, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@VIGNERON: The most common relationships between a museum building and an organization can be represented with these three properties: operator (P137), owned by (P127), and occupant (P466). I recommend adding them to the list of properties in this Wikiproject. Fjjulien (talk) 04:28, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

It's worth remembering that there are also cases where a single collection is spread over multiple locations. Queries and templates should be aware that a collection item may have statements for both collection (P195) and location (P276), and that a user may want to see all the items in the whole collection; or, alternatively, just the collection items in a particular location. Jheald (talk) 15:26, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Museum Day 2020 - Wikidata Competition

A little late (I did not find this page until Daniel Mietchen gave me a hint), but there ist still time to participate. Until May 18 - the Museum Day 2020 - you can take part in a Wikidata Competition. The aim is to add missing data, take care of incorrect entries etc. of museums and also objects within them, with a special focus on adding labels and label descriptions in the main and the minority languages of the participating countries (AT, CH, DE, FR, IT). Anyone from everywhere around the world is welcome, though you'll have to join one or more of the five country-specific dashboards where the edits, to be precise: the characters added, are counted. --Manfred Werner (WMAT) (talk) 11:25, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

banner image

I don't think, that the usage of the pyramid as banner is within the deminimis exception for File:Cour Napoléon at night - Louvre.jpg. Better take an image not located in France. Or an old museum. --Herzi Pinki (talk) 07:11, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Modeling of exhibitions

Tubezlob VIGNERON Jane023 Pigsonthewing Ambrosiani Spinster Wittylama Fuzheado Emijrp Daniel Mietchen Marsupium Martingggg Anne-LaureM Beat Estermann Manu1400 Mauricio V. Genta Patafisik MartinPoulter Tris T7 BeatrixBelibaste Clifflandis Mrtngrsbch Reciproque Weadock313 (talk) 21:56, 27 November 2019 (UTC) ProtoplasmaKid Crowjane7 Scarey1 (talk) 11:55, 9 February 2021 (UTC) Zblace Suna no onna Maxime Ravel Antoine2711 S.v.Mering

Notified participants of WikiProject Museums

Hi,

Is there somehwere a model for items about temporary exhibition? I created a lot of them recently (300+), I have the general idea but I have some questions about some details.

First, here is the SPARQL query:

#Properties use on temporary exhibitions by number
SELECT ?property ?propertyLabel ?propertyDescription ?count WHERE { 
	{
		select ?propertyclaim (COUNT(*) AS ?count) where {
			?item wdt:P31/wdt:P279* wd:Q29023906 .
			?item ?propertyclaim [] .
		} group by ?propertyclaim 
	}
	?property wikibase:claim ?propertyclaim .
	SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "fr,en" . }
} ORDER BY DESC (?count)

Try it!

But I still have some questions, like:

• what property should I use for "under the direction of" (in French "sous la direction de"), there is several possible candidates like curator (P1640) or organizer (P664) and I'm not 100% sure what is the difference and to know which to use when (and two items use editor (P98) which is also a close concept)
• what to do when an exhibition has traveled in places (and possibly changed a bit, sometimes it has a new name but it still the same exhibition, sometimes everything change but the name is still the same)
  • we could have only one item, and put a ton of qualifiers (like the location is only valid for these dates and these dates are valid for this location)
  • we could have several item (like it happend with Q80811038, Q106703943, Q93089966), these case are rare so it's not a lot more items and it would make the information clearer I guess
• is coordinate location (P625) really a good idea? It's not unusual to have 2 exhibitions each year in a museum so 100 points on a map at the same place is probably not a good idea (plus, coordinates can already easily be found with location (P276)).

What do you think?

Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 14:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I use P50 for the curators and use the museum(s) as publisher and location. I would not use coordinates unless there is some part of the exhibition in a park. Coordinates belong with the institurtion. Jane023 (talk) 15:08, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

As to "museum(s) as publisher and location": I still think it is a very bad idea to use one item for an exhibition and its catalog together. --Marsupium (talk) 20:56, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

@Marsupium: same! It may take 5 minutes to create two separate items and it will save way more time afterwards. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 18:52, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

VIGNERON, regarding the single/several item question: I'd use the several item approach and have done so in El Siglo de Oro. The Age of Velázquez (Q28043290) connecting the items with has part(s) (P527)/part of (P361). Cheers, --Marsupium (talk) 20:56, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Oh interresting. I'll look more into that. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 18:52, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

price (P2284) or fee (P2555)?

Hello everyone. For indicating the entrance fee for a museum I've always used fee (P2555), as this is a de-facto standard for museums (see query). Now I'm seeing that, in the example provided in this WikiProject's mainpage, the property price (P2284) is suggested.

I propose to edit this example replacing the property with fee (P2555), as also proposed above by users VIGNERON and Ambrosiani. --Horcrux (talk) 16:31, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Since no objection have been raised, I applied the proposed change. --Horcrux (talk) 20:32, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Late reply …: Sounds good to me. Thank you! --Marsupium (talk) 06:25, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Museum services (shop, restaurant...) - P912

We are working during the GLAMHack 2022 in Mendrisio Canton Ticino Switzerland to identify museums with sustainable services. We are looking at museums shops and restaurant. I am adding information about museum restaurants and shops of Canton Ticino and I am using P912. Can I add it also in this list? thanks :) iopensa (talk) 17:37, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Exhibitions with multiples dates

Hi,

Sometimes (especially during the COVID) exhibitions have multiples dates, because it started/ended earlier/later than expected. What would be the best model for these case? Obivously it involves ranking and qualifiers but I'm not sure which one. See https://w.wiki/6PMv for exhibitations with start time (P580) or end time (P582) with a DeprecatedRank or PreferredRank. See also Q80799631#P582 where I tried to put qualifiers...

Cheers, VIGNERON en résidence (talk) 12:10, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Museum as a building vs museum as an institution

There is editwar related to the question: museum as a building (are fixated to the location) vs museum as an institution (generally are not fixated to the location), how to show location and coordinates? Discussion here: User_talk:Madamebiblio#Special:Diff/1849779337 Estopedist1 (talk) 19:32, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

This is exactly why the institution and the building should have separate items. The documentation of the project should be update to reflect that more clearly. Cheers, VIGNERON (talk) 12:42, 27 March 2023 (UTC)