Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Extra-European Collections at Sforza Castle and Fondazione Passaré

The Extra-European Collections at the Sforza Castle are a set of over 8000 items currently owned by the City of Milan. Hundreds of photographs taken by professional photographers of masks, statues and other artifacts belonging to the African exhibitions contribute to WikiAfrica.

History of collaboration
The Collections joined WikiAfrica in November 2011. Thus the process of sending low-res photographic images in low resolution and their inventory details began. The collaboration between Wikimedia Commons and the Collections will continue: hundreds of images will be uploaded in 2012, and Sara, an Alternative civilian service volunteer at the Collections and active in this project, gives us more good news; ''<<We have created a new project in partnership with Wikimedia Italy, Associazione Mimondo, Fondazione Passaré and Gruppo Archeologico Ambrosiano and half-funded by Fondazione Cariplo. We planned wikitrips to discover little known archaeological heritage in Lombardy and will upload resources of interest. Moreover, we are seeking a close cooperation with schools and students who participate in the wikitrips for the publication of other material produced during the itineraries. For this reason the Extra-European Collections also plan to release under free licenses the photographs and index cards about the pre-Columbian heritage.>>'' Carolina Orsini and Piera Briani from the Collections have also helped write a template letter to be used for the Share Your Knowledge subproject. Mrs. Orsini also wanted to address a reassuring invitation to other organizations willing to participate in the same project: <>.

Uploads and reactions
The mass upload is performed as usual by the project tutor Michele Casanova. As it often happens on the Wikimedia projects, spontaneous and unexpected mechanisms of cooperation are soon triggered as in the case of a Dutch user, commons:User:Maiella, who immediately began to categorize photo of masks according to the different ethnic groups, followed by commons:User:Ji-Elle, who is French. The information for the works uploaded to Commons is extremely accurate and detailed as it is made ​​by an expert, teacher and researcher of African art, Mr. Ivan Bargna. User:Pietro_Amadini instead oversaw the writing of the article about the Collections. Among the most active editors there is also User:Sachi85, a.k.a. Sara, who also attended the Course for Wikipedians in Residence held in 2012 at Lettera27; she reveals she found it useful, interesting and practical for those who are starting out and specifically for cultural operators involved in GLAM collaborations. In telling his experience Sara has also described her activities on the sites: <> She also mentions some <>, but she also highlights the success of the initiative: <>, and also, <>

Content analysis
In August 2012 there were 427 images in the category of Collections and it is estimated that once the upload process ends, the total figure will reach one thousand. 4.6% of the files were used back then in various projects. Nevertheless, they are used in 5 different Wikipedias, beyond the Italian one, French, German, Finnish and Ukrainian, and between July and August 2012 (thanks to hits on pages that include them) they had already totaled over 8,000 views. In addition to the good quality of the shots, the richness and accuracy of the descriptions of the same must be reported, a feature which is not common in freshly uploaded images and especially among those coming from a donation; each page contains many details such as the date of creation of the object, its size, the current location, the number of inventory and even specific bibliographical references. Anyone wishing to contribute in this project could, for example, translate these index cards into other languages, as they are invaluable for understanding what the object represents, by whom it was used, how and in which social situations, revealing the less obvious and sometimes curious meanings.

In September 2012 a nice award arrived for the Collections: one of their images, provided in high-resolution (4096 x 6135 px), becomes a Featured Picture on Commons, and will be hosted by main pages of Wikipedia in various languages in October. Quite a good result, especially considering that this did not just earn visibility for this Ejagham mask, but certainly also for the related page of its ethnic group and for that about the institution displaying it; this usually means new translations, improvements to existing pages or the creation new ones. This is the usual process of "content production" on Wikimedia sites, but the fact that it was triggered by an image from the Collections gives the opportunity to stop for a little while to reflect on how important it is, how much potential it has, how far every single photo or article hosted on WMF servers can get. The contributions by the Collections are also deservedly mentioned in the August 2012 issue of the monthly bulletin Wikimedia Highlights, and uploads are completed in the month of September with the upload of images from #00583 to #00977.

The contribution of the Foundation Passaré
Much of the contents of the Collections come from the exhibition''Mal d'Africa. Alessandro Passaré, la costruzione di una collezione'', held in 2012. The works are fine examples of primary art, as defined on the website of Fondazione Passaré which they belong to, an institution founded in Milan in 2007 with cultural aims to remember the doctor and traveler Alessandro Passaré and continue his work as an art collector and enthusiast. Passaré expanded his interests from contemporary art to African art, wisely purchasing hundreds of pieces of excellent workmanship and carefully documenting travels and acquisitions. The showcased image above mentioned actually belongs to the Foundation, which revealed its direct involvement in the  Share Your Knowledge project in March 2012 ; they donated some texts and some images of the African collection from their website which can now be found on Wikimedia Commons thanks to the work of the project tutor Michele Casanova in May 2012. On the French Wikipedia a file was used to illustrate the article about Bété people, and another one is on the entry about Eket people.
 *  commons:Category:African Art Collection of Fondazione Passaré, 35 images (as of January 2013), over 2,600 direct hits between May and December 2012.
 * To view all the images of the Foundation provided by the Extra-European Collections, click this link.

Contributions on Commons

 * Commons:category:Raccolte Extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco, 427 images (as of August 2012), 960 images (as in October 2012)

Italian version

 * it:Progetto:WikiAfrica/Istituzioni/Raccolte Extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco

Related articles

 * Sforza Castle
 * it:Raccolte extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco
 * it:Fondazione Passaré
 * it:Alessandro Passaré

Links

 * Official website for the Collections