Wikipedia:GLAM/Khalili

The Khalili Foundation is partnering with Wikimedia UK to share a unique set of cultural content on and to promote cultural diversity on Wikimedia platforms. The partnership was announced at Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm.

The Khalili Foundation is a UK-based charity promoting interfaith and intercultural understanding through art, culture and education. As part of its cultural philanthropy, it freely shares images and data from the Khalili Collections. The Khalili Collections are eight collections of cultural treasures acquired by Professor Sir David Khalili -each the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. They include: The partnership involves:
 * Islamic Art (700-2000)
 * Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage (700-2000)
 * Aramaic Documents (535 BC-324 BC)
 * Japanese Art of the Meiji Period (1868-1912)
 * Japanese Kimono (1700-2000)
 * Swedish Textiles (1700-1900)
 * Spanish Damascened Metalwork (1850-1900)
 * Enamels of the World (1700-2000)
 * Sharing more than 1,500 high-resolution images of items from across the eight collections;
 * Sharing short lay summaries of research by academic experts that relates to the collections.

User:MartinPoulter is acting as a Wikimedian In Residence for the project from February 2020 onwards.

This is a highly significant partnership in a number of ways. It is globally the first GLAM-Wiki project with a private collection. The collections are mostly about art outside the European/ North American canons. The collected artworks are often the best technical and artistic examples of their era, and they have been digitised with high resolution. There are more than seventy volumes published about the collection, by leading academic experts, that give contextual essays as well as documenting the art works. This information is being used to improve overview articles such as Edo period, Meiji era, Damascening, Japanese lacquerware, and to create artist biographies. At the outset of the project, Japanese decorative arts were poorly represented on English Wikipedia, with some outstanding artists having no biography, and no mention or art and culture in the Meiji era article. Wikimedia also suffered from a paucity of images related to Islam, compared to other major religions.

This Month in GLAM
• June 2024

• May 2024

• April 2024

• March 2024

• February 2024

• January 2024

• December 2023 (including annual summary for 2023)

• November 2023

• October 2023

• September 2023

• August 2023

• July 2023

• June 2023

• May 2023

• April 2023

• March 2023

• February 2023

• January 2023

• December 2022 (including annual summary for 2022)

• November 2022

• October 2022

• September 2022

• August 2022

• July 2022

• June 2022

• May 2022

• April 2022

• March 2022

• February 2022

• January 2022

• December 2021 (including annual summary for 2021)

• November 2021

• October 2021

• September 2021

• August 2021

• July 2021

• June 2021

• May 2021

• April 2021

• March 2021

• February 2021

• January 2021

• December 2020

• November 2020

• October 2020

• September 2020

• August 2020

• July 2020

• June 2020

• May 2020

• April 2020

• March 2020

• February 2020

• September 2019

Blog posts

 * "Let's culturally diversify the Internet", Wikimedia UK blog, June 2024
 * "Reaching millions of readers through Wikipedia", Guest article for Cultural Content newsletter, 4 April 2024
 * "Three ways to make links between collections", May 2023
 * "Historical people and modern collections: a Wikidata exploration", February 2022
 * "Manuscripts on Wikidata: the state of the art?", October 2021

Case study

 * outreach:GLAM/Case_studies/Khalili_Collections

New articles created
• # Khalili Collections (DYK 26 October 2019)

• # Khalili Collection of Kimono (DYK 18 April 2020)

• # Plácido Zuloaga (DYK 18 June 2020) (Passed Good Article review 18 March 2021)

• # Khalili Collection of Japanese Art (DYK 28 May 2020) (Passed Good Article review 22 October 2020)

• # List of collections of Japanese art

• # Khalili Imperial Garniture (DYK 12 July 2020) (Passed Good Article review 15 July 2021)

• # Yabu Meizan (DYK 9 June 2020)

• # Khalili Collection of Swedish Textiles (DYK 31 August 2020)

• # Khalili Collection of Spanish Metalwork (DYK 15 October 2020)

• # A volunteer has translated the entire Yabu Meizan article into Vietnamese, creating the first Vietnamese Wikipedia page with a Khalili Collections image.

• # A volunteer has translated the lead of the Khalili Collection of Swedish Textiles article into Persian.

• # A different volunteer translated the lead of the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art article into Persian.

• # Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World (DYK 10 November 2020) (Passed Good Article review 27 June 2021)

• # A volunteer translated the full Plácido Zuloaga article into French.

• # A volunteer translated the full Khalili Collection of Japanese Art article into Malay.

• # Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents (DYK 12 January 2021) (Passed Good Article review 10 September 2021)

• # A volunteer translated the Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents article into Persian.

• # A volunteer translated a few paragraphs of Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents into French.

• # A volunteer translated the Khalili Collection of Kimono article into Persian.

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Khalili Collection of Spanish Metalwork article into Persian.

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World article into Persian.

• # Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage (DYK 16 March 2021) (Passed Good Article review 4 September 2021)

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage article into Arabic.

• # Sitara (textile) (DYK 29 April 2021)

• # Mahmal (DYK 28 May 2021)

• # Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (DYK 3 June 2021)

• # Anis Al-Hujjaj (DYK 1 July 2021)

• # A volunteer translated most of the Anis Al-Hujjaj article into Persian.

• # A volunteer translated the entire Sitara (textile) article into Arabic.

• # Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) (DYK 15 September 2021)

• # A volunteer translated the whole Khalili Collection of Islamic Art article into Italian.

• # A volunteer translated the Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) article into Arabic.

• # Dar al-Kiswa (DYK 17 March 2022) (passed Good Article review 18 June 2022)

• # A volunteer translated the Dar al-Kiswa article into Persian.

• # Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam (DYK 31 December 2022) (passed Featured Article review 4 April 2023) (mention in Signpost) (Today's Featured Article 17 May 2023)

• # Musa va 'Uj (DYK 25 April 2023) (passed Good Article review 22 December 2023)

• # A volunteer translated the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article into Indonesian.

• # A volunteer translated the Sitara (textile) article into Indonesian. There were formatting problems with this article, which I helped the Indonesian community to fix.

• # A volunteer translated the Mahmal article into Indonesian.

• # A volunteer translated the Anis Al-Hujjaj article into Indonesian.

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article into Malay.

• # A volunteer translated the Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam article into Urdu. This has subsequently been given Urdu Wikipedia's Featured Article award.

• # A volunteer translated the Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) article into Indonesian.

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) article into Malay.

• # A volunteer translated the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage article into Indonesian.

• # A volunteer translated the Musa va 'Uj article into Spanish

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Anis Al-Hujjaj article into Urdu.

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) article into Urdu.

• # Gulshan-i 'Ishq (DYK 19 November 2023)

• # Empire of the Sultans (DYK 18 January 2024) (passed Featured Article review 7 May 2024) (scheduled for Today's Featured Article 23 July 2024) (mention in Signpost)

• # A volunteer translated the Sitara (textile) article into Uzbek.

• # A volunteer translated the whole Khalili Collection of Islamic Art article into Indonesian

• # A volunteer translated the whole Empire of the Sultans article into Indonesian

• # A volunteer translated the greatly-expanded Falnama article, including the material about the Khalili Falnama, into Persian

• # Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands (DYK 19 May 2024)

• # A volunteer translated the Muhammad Sadiq (photographer) article into Igbo.

• # A volunteer translated the Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands article into Russian

• # A volunteer translated the Mahmal article into Turkish.

• # A volunteer translated a summary of the Khalili Collections article into Persian.

New articles created at editathons
• #Hatip Mehmed Efendi

• #Maqamat of Al-Hariri (manuscript)

• #Mihrab (painting)

• #Ahmed Cherkaoui

• #Soheila Sokhanvari

Other articles substantially improved
• # List of museums of Islamic art (threefold expansion)

• # Meiji era (added sections on Art and Fashion)

• # Edo period (added section on Fashion)

• # Damascening (added section on Eibar, Spain)

• # Shibata Zeshin

• # Makuzu Kōzan

• # Japanese lacquerware

• # Imperial Household Artist (fivefold expansion)

• # Japanese pottery and porcelain

• # Japanese_art

• # Namikawa Sōsuke (tenfold expansion from stub to B class - DYK 25 July 2020)

• # Namikawa Yasuyuki (fivefold expansion - DYK 25 July 2020)

• # Kawade Shibatarō (fivefold expansion - DYK 7 August 2020)

• # Japonisme

• # Swedish carpets and rugs (more than doubled in size)

• # Vitreous enamel (added sections on Japan and on Islamic countries)

• # Dala'il al-Khayrat (Added section on manuscripts)

• # A volunteer has translated the article section on art of the Meiji era into Ukranian.

• # Kiswah (added section on Textiles of the Kaaba)

• # Islamic embroidery (added section on Textiles of sacred sites)

• # History of the Hajj (added subsections and re-wrote lead)

• #Talismanic shirt (expanded by about 50%)

• #The Talismanic shirt article was translated into Persian, including the content added by this project.

• # The Kiswah article was translated into Portuguese including the content added by this project.

• # UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity‎ (sixfold expansion - DYK 5 June 2022)

• # The Talismanic shirt article was translated into Turkish, including the content added by this project.

• # The additions to the Talismanic shirt article were also translated into German.

• # World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (fivefold expansion)

• # Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (adding content/ rewriting for readability)

• # Cultural diversity (almost entirely rewritten) (open peer review completed 6 January 2024)

• # Falnama (eleven times expansion, from Stub class to B class) (DYK 13 October 2023)

• # Bibliomancy (added a section on Islam using text from the Falnama article)

• # The Talismanic shirt article has been partially translated into Indonesian and into Malay, including an image shared from the Khalili Collections. Many more articles — too many to list here — have been improved with images and/or additional facts and citations. As of January 2023, the BaGLAMa tool reports that more than 300 pages on English Wikipedia have Khalili Collections images.

Global Visual Arts Taskforce
As part of this project, I have created this list of target articles, based on the Ahmed and Poulter research paper. You are invited to improve Wikipedia's cultural diversity by creating or improving articles about the artists and masterpieces on the list.

Images uploaded
I've created the dedicated account User:MartinPoulter (KC WIR) for uploads from March 2021 onwards. That account will be used for image uploads only, not for any article editing.

1,541 (Images uploaded as part of this effort usually have "Khalili Collection" as the first part of the filename).

These categories are expanding slightly over time, usually with cropped versions of already-uploaded images.

These images are categorised into over a thousand Commons categories so far (excluding hidden categories).

Image views

 * 49.2 million image views total in 2021, including images on the front page for DYK.
 * 47 million image views total in 2022


 * The category has been added to the BaGLAMa2 stats tool. Stats for January 2020 show zero hits, but that is an error with the stats tool. The tool seems to have stopped calculating stats in January 2023 but page view statistics can still be calculated by GLAMorgan.
 * January 2023: 4,794,240 (missing data for 595 pages) (GLAMorgan gives a much higher number than BaGLAMa2)
 * February 2023: 4,284,016 (missing data for 635 pages)
 * March 2023: 5,276,872 (missing data for 687 pages)
 * April 2023: 5,123,063 (missing data for 546 pages) (excluding 4.8 million image views from the Musa va 'Uj DYK)
 * May 2023: 5,471,972 (missing data for 686 pages) (excluding 4.7 million image views from Today's Featured Article on English Wikipedia, May 17)
 * June 2023: 4,709,833 (missing data for 662 pages)
 * July 2023: 4,699,823 (missing data for 572 pages)
 * August 2023: 4,520,153 (missing data for 700 pages)
 * September 2023: 4,840,296 (missing data for 531 pages)
 * October 2023: 4,920,186 (missing data for 541 pages) (excluding 4.6 million image views from the Falnama DYK)
 * November 2023: 5,584,000 (excluding 4.8 million views from the Gulshan-i 'Ishq DYK on English Wikipedia, 70,489 views from the war mask Picture Of The Day on Arabic Wikipedia, 29 November, and 65,080 views from the Picture of the Day on Persian Wikipedia, 2 December)
 * December 2023: 5,161,982 (missing data for 543 pages) (excluding the Picture Of The Day on Persian Wikipedia, 14 December)
 * Total for 2023: 78.5 million image views
 * January 2024: 5,958,489 image views on 92 wikis
 * February 2024: 7,154,543 (missing data for 636 pages) on 93 wikis
 * March 2024: 6,126,483 on 94 wikis
 * April 2024: 5,499,021 on 94 wikis
 * May 2024: 5,071,362 on 94 wikis
 * June 2024: 4,678,031 on 97 wikis

The BaGLAMa stats tool is overestimating the image views for some months. Corrected numbers are below. These numbers do not include image hits on the front page, for example when an image is used in a DYK.

Wikidata items
So far 1,195 items created for objects in the Khalili Collections (not including the items for the collections themselves). Total 11,612 statements (mean 9.7 statements per object)

The number of Wikidata items does not match the number of images because there are often multiple images of the same object, and some items lack images because they are too recent for the original object to be out of copyright.

Featured images

 * Featured images on English Wikipedia

PetScan query which finds other featured images (16 results as of 1 February 2024)

A Composite Imaginary View of Japan was the picture of the day on French Wikipedia for 29 May 2021, where it was shown to more than half a million people. This was also Commons Picture of the Day on 11 July 2021, which also made it Picture of the Day on 26 versions of Wikipedia and on Spanish Wikinews. Pages with the image were seen by around 900,000 people in total.

Featured Articles

 * 17 May 2023


 * 23 July 2024

Did You Know?
These statements, images and links have appeared on English Wikipedia's front page where they were each seen by millions of people.

Wikidata-driven visualisations
As a by-product of the catalogue data which is being added to Wikidata, we can generate maps, timelines and other visualisations of objects in the Khalili Collections, as well as combining Khalili data with other collections.


 * Histropedia timeline of some objects from the Enamels of the World collection
 * Histropedia timeline of some coins in the Khalili Collections
 * Histropedia timeline of some Qurans in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art
 * Histropedia timeline of objects in the Khalili Collection of Japanese Art


 * Map: Khalili Collection of Islamic Art
 * Map: Khalili Collection of Enamels of the World


 * Image gallery: Things depicted in art works of the Khalili Collections
 * Image gallery: Things depicting the Kaaba in the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage
 * Image gallery: Khalili Collection of Islamic Art objects from 650 to 1250

On-wiki resources

 * Commons Category: commons:Category:Khalili Collections
 * Commons institution page: commons:Institution:Khalili Collections
 * Commons permissions template: commons:Template:Khalili collection
 * Navigational template: Template:Nasser Khalili
 * GLAMtools query for image uses across Wikimedia projects excluding Wikidata
 * Links from Commons to the Khalili Collections web site
 * Links from English Wikipedia to the Khalili Collections web site
 * |Khalili_Collections|Khalili_Collection_of_Enamels_of_the_World|Khalili_Collection_of_Spanish_Metalwork|Khalili_Collection_of_Swedish_Textiles|Khalili_Collection_of_Kimono|Khalili_Collection_of_Japanese_Art|Khalili_Collection_of_Aramaic_Documents|Khalili_Collection_of_Islamic_Art View stats graph for Khalili Collections articles
 * View of interconnected Wikipedia articles linked to Sitara (textile) in Wiki Graph tool
 * WikiNav (shows click-trails into and out of an article during May and June 2023)

Wikidata

 * Wikidata queries about the collections: wikidata:User:MartinPoulter/queries/khalili
 * Database query for recent changes to Wikidata items about KC objects
 * Khalili Collections in Reasonator
 * Khalili Collections in Crotos:
 * Japanese Art of the Meiji Period
 * Swedish Textiles
 * Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage
 * Islamic Art
 * Enamels of the World
 * Khalili Collection of Islamic Art in Sum Of All Paintings
 * PetScan query that finds images without a Wikidata-driven template
 * Khalili Collections on ArtUK: would be nice to link these pages from the Wikidata entries of the objects.

Coverage

 * "Khalili Foundation Year in Review", Wikimedia UK blog, 29 January 2024
 * "The winners of the 2023 UK Wikimedian of the Year Awards", Wikimedia UK blog, 6 December 2023
 * Webinar given by Martin Poulter for the Wikimedians of Islamic Civilisation User Group, 11 November 2023. This was an 80-minute event with presentation and discussion. The initial presentation is available on YouTube in English and also in Arabic.
 * World Day for Cultural Diversity spotlighted on Wikipedia homepage for the first time ever! Khalili Foundation, 28 July 2023
 * Profile of the partnership on the Wikimedia UK web site
 * "KRC Wikipedia Edit-a-thon" Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford, 6 February 2023
 * "Study examines cultural leanings of Wikimedia projects' visual art coverage" Signpost 4 February 2023 (by Martin Poulter and Waqas Ahmed)
 * "Events for Cultural Diversity in Visual Art", Wikimedia UK blog, 13 December 2022
 * "Waqās Ahmed on Knowledge Equity and Wikipedia", video on Wikimedia UK YouTube channel, 22 November 2022
 * Mention in round-up of the Khalili Foundation's Cultural Philanthropy activities, 7 July 2022
 * Case study reprinted in the Wikimedia UK impact report, April 2022
 * Blog post on Khalili Collections web site "Khalili images on Wikipedia" 7 January 2022
 * Mention in the Wikimedia UK impact report, March 2021
 * Sir David spoke about the partnership in an online event held 25 February 2021. "For Wikipedia [...], we gave them one photograph for each collection to use on the home page, and, funnily enough, after covering seven of the collections, they had about 25 million viewers. That shows you how powerful digitisation can be. [...] That is the future: if you want to make available the collection of an institution, digitisation and sharing bring democratisation into it at the same time." (around 14:40 in the video onwards)
 * Mention in "Teaching matters" blog post at Edinburgh University by Dr. Glaire Anderson and Ewan McAndrew, 14 January 2021
 * "Wikimedia UK launches partnership with Khalili Collections", Museums Association, 12 September 2019
 * "Around the world in 35,000 objects – and a handful of clicks" Apollo Magazine, 11 October 2019

Effect of the COVID-19 lockdown
The original intent was that I would visit Khalili Foundation properties at least monthly to talk to staff and examine/ inform attitudes towards Wikimedia. That has not been possible, and some of the issues are best discussed face-to-face, thus this limits the ability of the project to effect cultural change. So we are preparing a report/ presentation to deliver remotely if necessary, using the impressive statistics of what the project has achieved to convince people that Wikimedia is crucially relevant to their work.

I was going to consult collection catalogues and exhibition catalogues during visits to London. So instead I have been sent books in the post. I made a first visit to London in May 2021 and used the opportunity to start consult publications. Bulk image uploads, which would also have been the basis of a data set in Wikidata, were delayed. Just before the lockdown, we did a batch upload of kimono images to refine the process. The lockdown disrupted staff access to the server with the images on it, so we could not do large bulk uploads. For a while I was getting images from the Khalili Collections web site, plus some via email, and manually uploading them as needed.