Cultivating Collaborative Pathways with Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK)

In mid-August, a group of OpenverseOpenverse Openverse is a search engine for openly-licensed media, including images and audio. Find Openverse on GitHub and at https://openverse.org. maintainers gathered in Copenhagen, Denmark, to synchronize on the project, discuss planning for next year, and generally catch up. While there, we had the opportunity to connect with Jonas Heide Smith, Merete Sanderhoff, and Nikolaj Erichsen from the Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK), Denmark’s largest art museum. The meeting was a great chance to learn more about SMK’s vision and discuss open media and licensing topics.

SMK is one of Openverse’s numerous sources, contributing to the 700+ million Creative Common (CC) licensed and public domain works available in the catalog. Within Openverse, users can search and explore all of SMK’s high-quality artwork, including sculptures and statues. These pictures, taken by the museum photographers at SMK, are free to use under the CC0 license and come with automatically generated attribution text via Openverse.

During our time together, we discussed several shared endeavors, including the challenge of effectively educating about licensing, the ongoing license enforcement efforts, and the FAIR and CARE Data Principles, particularly around handling indigenous works. Additionally, we talked about a possible collaboration with the National Museum of Denmark and the exciting prospect of incorporating SMK’s 3D models into Openverse. These discussions provided an excellent opportunity for cooperation and opened the door for further dialogue and integrations.

Know an institution or source of Creative Commons works that you’d like to see in Openverse? Let us know! As part of our mission to make openly-licensed media widely discoverable and accessible, we’re always looking to expand our catalog with high-quality, trusted sources of CC and public domain works.

#openverse #creative-commons #providers