Natalie Wright Kevin Yang LIS 7590 Dr. Yoon 12 May, 2025 Project Documentation Collection Description This collection features artwork from the exhibit Reflections and Conversations , which was hosted in the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery from February 1 to March 16, 2025. Reflections and Conversations was curated by St. Catherine University Associate Professor and Minnesota ceramic artist Monica Rudquist. The exhibit focused on the relationship between Monica’s work and that of her late father, Jerry Rudquist (1934-2001). Due to the exhibit's short run, we wanted to preserve the exhibit in digital form through this Omeka site. This collection features art in a variety of forms, textures, and dimensions. The paintings and prints were created by Jerry Rudquist, while the pottery pieces were sculpted by Monica Rudquist. The potential user group of this exhibit will be students, staff, and faculty of St. Catherine University who are interested in learning more about past art exhibits of the CGM gallery. Because Monica Rudquist was an associate professor at the university, students and faculty may visit the online exhibit to learn more about her art and legacy. The exhibit will also expand to audiences outside of the university. Scholars or folks who are interested in Monica and Jerry Rudquist’s art, story, and history will find this exhibit extremely valuable. Jerry was very involved in the Twin Cities art community, so there will likely be interest in this exhibit from his students and fellow artists in the area. The Omeka S site in which this virtual exhibit is situated, is able to be accessed by anyone, including the general public. The publisher of this exhibit belongs to St. Catherine University, and any inquiries must be directed to the university. A copyright statement is attached to each piece of art. Per our metadata: “This digital image may not be reproduced for any reason without the express written consent of St. Catherine University. Artwork available for faculty/staff use. Please contact the Catherine G. Murphy Art Gallery Director, Nicole Watson, at (651) 690-6637.” Item Description: The Reflections and Conversations exhibit had items in the two main galleries (east gallery and west gallery) as well as several pieces behind the entrance desk. While it would have been less work to only focus on items from one gallery for our Omeka exhibit, it made more sense from a user perspective to include everything from the physical exhibit. By including all the pieces from the original exhibit, we were able to more effectively represent it in digital form. As all of our items were photos of three-dimensional objects (rather than digitized documents), we used a standard .jpg file format. I think if we had been creating this site in a professional capacity, we would have used the .tiff file format, as that is the archival standard. We would love to be able to make our site available to the Catherine G. Murphy gallery if they would like to use it. If they would prefer the photos in a .tiff format, that is always something we could change later on. We chose to use twelve Dublin Core fields to describe our items, with the format field being used twice per piece. Title, Identifier, creator, date, type, format, subject, spatial coverage, publisher, and rights were all required fields. Description and relation were optional fields, as not every piece had a description or was part of a series. For these two fields, we put “n/a” if there was no content. The date field was required, but several pieces had unknown dates. For these, we put “unknown” in the field. All of our items had measurements, except for Murmuration, as it was simply too large for us to adequately measure without a ladder or more specific equipment. System Architecture: For our digital collection and exhibit, we used the new version of Omeka, “Omeka S.” As this version is quite new, creating the exhibit took a bit more trial and error than if we had used Omeka Classic. We ingested all the individual photos of artwork as items via the CSV import feature in Omeka. This was a vital feature, as it easily allowed us to upload the metadata already in our spreadsheet. We uploaded the behind-the-scenes photos and additional photos of the galleries as assets. This allowed us to include them in our exhibit without needing to include thorough metadata or have them take up space in our “Browse Items” page. Importing videos ended up being a bit of a challenge. While it was possible to embed videos from YouTube or other sites, the only way to upload an .mp4 file was to create an item for it. We also had to compress the videos before they would successfully upload. Design-wise, we tried out all the site themes offered before settling on the theme “Freedom.” This theme looked sleek and allowed a decent amount of customization. I would have liked an image carousel feature, but I didn't see that offered in any of the plug-ins or “modules” as they're called in Omeka S. As mentioned above, we used .jpg files for all our photos, and .mp4 files for our videos. In addition to the pages we created from scratch, we utilized the “Items” or “Browse Items” page as well as a page that linked to an outside site (Catherine G. Murphy Gallery website). Exhibit Description: Our digital exhibit starts with Introduction and About the Artists pages, which introduce visitors to the exhibit. As we wanted to recreate the feel of the physical exhibit, each of the next three pages focuses on one of the locations of artwork in the gallery. First is the Entrance page, followed by the East Gallery and West Gallery pages. We organized the pieces on all three of these pages to match the order of the pieces in the physical exhibit. The pieces in the East and West Gallery pages flow clockwise around the room. Both the East and West Gallery pages have two subpages: Tour and Additional Photos. The Tour pages include a 360 video of each gallery to give visitors a better sense of the gallery space. The Additional Photos pages include photos of larger groupings of art from both galleries. These pages highlight the intentionality of Monica’s curation. Next on the navigation bar is the Behind the Scenes page, which displays the five posters that were scattered between both galleries. These posters show Monica’s process in creating Murmuration , which was the only piece created specifically for this exhibit. Finally, we have a Browse Items page which displays item records for all 64 of the exhibit’s pieces. The final page in our exhibit links to the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery’s web page about the Reflections and Conversations exhibit. User Guide Users can view and browse items in a variety of ways. The first way is by clicking on an item. In the Entrance, East Gallery, or West Gallery, users can click on an item to see the image at a larger scale and to view the accompanying metadata. These items can also be accessed on the Browse Items page. The items on this page can be sorted by “created,” “resource class,” and “title.” At the top of the exhibit site is a search bar that searches all pages on the site. There is also an advanced search feature next to the search bar that allows for a more detailed search. Promotional Pamphlet The following images are an example of a promotional pamphlet brochure of the exhibit. The intended audience is St. Catherine University’s students, staff, and faculty. This pamphlet will promote Monica and Jerry’s art, the digital exhibit, and the CGM gallery. The pamphlet includes information on the CGM gallery, sample pictures of artwork, a brief background of the exhibit, and a QR code for folks to navigate their way to the digital exhibit on Omeka S to learn more. Front Pages Inner Pages