Digital Asset Management for Visual Artists
This overview information is based on my presentations for the Center for the Preservation of Artist Legacies in New York, NY on Nov. 13, 2024 and April 2, 2025.
https://www.cpal-info.com/digitization-class
This is an important but often unseen aspect of analog visual artists with decades of analog work that has future market and cultural value.
Artists and their heirs are at the front line of preserving the history they lived and documented.
My perspectives on this topic draw from working with 20th century archives, visual artists, and estates with decades of historic analog content.
Themes
Important themes underlying this topic are risk management, accessibility, narratives, and preservation.
Keep In Mind
Goals, Strategies, Tactics
Archives can be dense and complex sources of information with many functions.
It’s important to be clear what to spend time and money on, what the ROI is, how perceptions of value evolve.
Numerous Applications
Visual media objects and their data can help preserve and inform institutional culture for custodians of an artist’s legacy.
Digital media objects can preserve analog objects and visual history destined for landfill, decay, or isolation.
A Digital Asset Management system facilitates making a CR “catalogue raisonné,” an overview of an artist’s entire output and history.
A Digital Asset Management system helps an institution when considering acquiring the physical content.
Digital Asset Management systems create value with narratives and accessibility.
Digital Asset Management
The idea behind Digital Asset Management systems (aka DAMs) is the Unified Field Theory of media, how all parts in a system relate to each other, in a system that is forward compatible.
These parts include: Physical and Digital Objects, Storage, Backups, Catalogs, Naming Conventions, Meta Data, Search, Directories, Vendor Systems, websites, Etc.
DAMs are a roadmap to the physical work, its context, and how it exists in the world.
Digital & Analog Content
Let’s define what this is for our purposes here.
Digital is anything stored in computer memory that we access through screens. Images files, vector files, documents, and container systems like spreadsheets, databases, and operating systems like Finder, Bridge, Lightroom.
Analog is everything that is stored in physical space that we can see and touch with our human biology. Works on paper, paper records, film, contextual materials (aka ephemera)
Coexist & Support
Digital records refer to and locate physical objects. Physical objects use digital records to help people see and understand their existence and meaning.
This active relationship is shaped by a purpose to support the people who own or work with the content. This happens at touch points, points of contact with content.
Internal & External Touch Points
Internal, Private
The people who interact with the content privately are the artist, staff, family, and heirs.
External, Public
The content that gets seen by either a select few or the public at large.
Researchers, museums, art markets, publishing
What content?
Analogue:
Artwork, finished works on paper
Context external to the object:
Process, The working materials used to make the finished work.
Ephemera, data story related to the artwork
Ephemera, things that describe the unique perspective of the artist or their culture.
Digital:
Master digital copies of analog artwork
Records
Text based docs - found by searching text intrinsic to the media
Image Based Objects - found by attached text (file names and metadata) and containers (folders) embedded or related to the media
Who is the content for?
Internal and external audiences
Facilitating appraisals and acquisitions
Catalogue raisonné
Custodial handoff
Marketing
Licensing
How is DAM Stored?
This is the software structure around the content.
It needs updating and maintenance.
After 3 - 10 years the data inside it can become unreadable.
DAM Related Software
Each one has strengths, weaknesses, overlap, and boundaries.
Always ask, who owns your data, will the container around it last indefinitely, what is the learning curve?
FileMaker - A Clairs (Apple) company
DIY or hired consultant, https://www.claris.com/partners/find-a-partner
Ask me for an example of photographer www.EllenGraham.com
Artbase.com - for “galleries, museums, collections, and artists” and merged with Artlogic.
Artlogic.net - for “galleries, artists and collections”
Artsystems.com - for “galleries, artists and collections”
Flickr.com - shared online albums with captions and comments
Finder - Apple
File Explorer - PC
Adobe Bridge, Like Finder with Metadata Options
Adobe Lightroom
DAM Related Doc Types
RTF (Rich Text Format)
Google Docs
Word
Pages
Google Sheets
Numbers
Excel
DAM Image Object Types, Common
Uncompressed: (For Master, Working, and Print Files)
.TIF
.PSD
.PSB
.DNG
Compressed: (For Websites and Reference)
.Jpg
.Png
DAM Motion Image Object Types
.Mov - Apple
Smaller with compression
Higher quality marginally
Easier to edit on Apple
.Mp4
International Standard
More compatible across websites and Apps
Kinds of Image Files
Source, Scans or Original Captures
Working Adjustment Layers
Flat Final, for Print or Web
Reference (FileMaker)
Image File Sizes, Common Uses
Kilobyte (KB): 1,000 bytes - For Websites and Social Media
Megabyte (MB): 1,000 kilobytes - For Master, Working, and Print Files
Gigabyte (GB): 1,000 megabytes - For Storage Devices
Terabyte (TB): 1,000 gigabytes - For Storage Devices
Image Color Spaces, Common
Adobe RGB (1998) - For Printing and Making Derivative Files
sRGB - For Digital Screens
Gray Gamna 2.2 - For B&W Images For Printing, Making Derivative Files, and Digital Screens
Data Storage Considerations
Each one has strengths, weaknesses, overlap, and boundaries.
Types:
Computer
Local hard drives
DVDs
Cloud
Apple iCloud
Google Drive
Dropbox
Box
Costs:
One time
Subscription
Costs of time, money & environmental impact
Larger files:
Take time to open and transfer
Have more cost to store and CO2 footprint
Risk Management of Data Loss from Damage & Security
Fire, Water, Theft, Virus, Ransom, Obsolete, Hacking
Local Drives
Offsite Physical Location
Cloud
Additional Accounts
Different Vendors
Who Manages Content?
The Artist Creator, Assistants, Staff, Family, Heirs
Professional archive work requires time, expertise, trust, money and learning.
With the range of expertise needed more then one person may be needed from high level to entry level.
Internal and external outsourcing and access
Geographic location of the archive
Skillsets needed: Writing and editing copy, archival preservation of media, project management, historical knowledge of the artist and their world, research, licensing, marketing, sales, accounting, tax, reproduction for print and digital publication, database maintenance, website and social media development, digital asset management
Content Institutional Knowledge
The Artist’s People who manage the data, are they scalable or lynchpins?
Direct lifetime contact with artist?
Consider making a basic guide, map, manual or screen cast for how your DAM works.
Descendants
It’s not inherently family relatives responsibility to take responsibility for an artist archive. However, digital asset management practices can make the process of transferring an artist’s work to future custodians easier and more likely.
Posthumous Artist Wishes for content objects:
Public Domain
Rights Managed
Royalty Free
Private Family Only
Sellable
Historically Relevant
Lessons from 20th century analogue film and print archives
Photographers had to create content systems to manage their growing and working archive
Alphabetically and project based
Job folders, lab folders, assignment in mail
Ephemera was kept because it was useful
Two Time Saving Tactics
iPhone Accessibility shortcut to see negative images as positives (On an iPhone with Face ID)
In Settings go to “Accessibility”
Go to the bottom of the menu and select “Accessibility Shortcut “
Select both:
_Classic Invert
_Color Filters
Then:
Swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen.
Press and hold on the short cut screen to add a short cut.
Click “+ Add a Control” Type “Accessibility” in the search field.
Now swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen, select Accessibility and activate both Classic Invert and Color Filters, turn on camera.
Note that pictures and screenshots in this mode will still be positive.
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ORC, Copy Paste
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a technology that converts text from images into digital text.
The Photos app on iPhone and destroy OS will convert any text in an image into text that can be copied and pasted into a document.
Books on Artist Estates and Archives
