Metadata for Public Art

Aug 15, 2024 | NEA Lab | 0 comments

By Mary C. Byron, BA.

When the U-M NEA Lab team formed our database of public art in Detroit, metadata was used to identify specific traits of certain artworks and the environment that surrounds the work. Metadata, in plain terms, is data about informational aspects of other data. In the case of the NEA Lab, the metadata (things like lighting, date of installation, size of work) describe aspects of a corresponding piece of public art (the primary data point).The database now comprises over 400 works of public art. Fields of metadata were created to describe the visibility of the artwork. This included “How far away can you see the artwork?” divided into “Daytime Visibility Distance” and “Nighttime Visibility Distance” (using the metrics below) for each work.

  • Not visible
  • Only from within the parcel
  • From the sidewalk
  • From across the street
  • From half a block away
  • From a block away or more 

Our team worked hard over the Summer and Fall of 2023 to populate the metadata with the daytime and nighttime visibility of each work. This required searching for things such as street lights near the work because Google Street View typically only captures images during the daytime. 

[alt text a diagram comparing visibility of murals during the day to murals at night noting that only art near street lights are clearly visible at night]
Image credit to NEA Lab [alt text a diagram comparing visibility of murals during the day to murals at night noting that only art near street lights are clearly visible at night]
Examples of Metadata Fields from the Database can be seen in the word cloud below. 
[alt text a word cloud depicting the names of metadata fields from the public art database including public accessibility size of the work zoning type and visibility at night and during the day]
Learn more about the NEA Lab