This was submitted to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their support of the project to produce animated videos of works in the Kress Collection.
Animating the Kress Collection Grant Report
The El Paso Museum of Art used a Digital Resources grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to produce a set of short animated videos of paintings drawn from the Museum’s European collection. The grant period ran from 2014-2016. The project was intended to bring these core paintings to life, help contemporary audiences find connections to old art, to give teachers an innovative teaching tool, and to impart information in engaging ways.
In order to realize this project, the Museum contracted with Dr. Sabiha Khan, currently a tenure-track faculty member in digital media at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), and offered paid internships to students with skills in digital and animated media. Dr. Khan managed the interns, who produced the animations, and she handled all audio and final editing of the videos. Dr. Elisabeth Sommer, Education Curator for EPMA, did the research for the audio narrative, which was crafted from interviews with Dr. Khan, and assisted with editing content. She also managed the project for the Museum.
The basic goals of the project were to engage new audiences with old art, provide tools for classroom use, particularly for schools not able to travel to the Museum, and to promote interest in the Kress Collection. Consequently, the videos are aimed at non-experts, from middle-school age to adults. The project was also intended to provide training opportunities for undergraduate, and recently graduated, students in digital media.
The following evaluation results from the interns indicate success in reaching this goal. When asked whether the internship provided “practical experience…in media production in a museum/non-profit context” 60% agreed and 40% strongly agreed. The percentage breakdown was the same for the statement that the “internship activities were challenging and stimulating” and for whether they would recommend the internship to others. To the question of whether the internship had resulted in “a greater understanding of the concepts, theories, and skills of producing media in a museum/non-profit context” 80% strongly agreed, while 20% agreed. The percentages were identical for the internship having provided “sufficient learning opportunities.”
Written comments from the evaluations provide additional gratifying insight. When asked whether the internship met their expectations, students responded with the following: “Yes, it actually exceeded my expectations. I did not think I would learn as much as I did;” “It taught me a big deal [sic] about how to develop and follow a workflow when working with animation;” “It was the first time I really had to do something as a group in the real world and that experience has been extremely valuable.” When asked to summarize the strengths of the internship one student stated that “it helped me innovate and create independently. It pushed me to learn more about art, especially the history of each painting, art era, etc. It motivated me to explore different types of animation and what I could do with each animation software.” Another student observed that the “supervisors’ dedication and passion towards the pieces of art is evident, which helps you understand the artist’s life and work, hence making [it] easier and more interesting to develop creative ideas.”
Evaluations of the videos also indicate general success in meeting the goals of engaging audiences with “old master” European paintings and raising interest in Kress Collection at EPMA. Evaluations of the first and second sets of videos (eight total) were given to three different sets of evaluators, members of a high school class in digital media, students in an introductory Museum Studies class at UTEP, and members of UTEP’s Art History Association. The evaluation included the following questions: 1. “Did the animation(s) increase your interest in or curiosity about the artist?” 2. “Did the animation(s) increase your interest in or curiosity about the painting?” and 3. “Are you more likely to visit the museum’s European painting section after watching the video(s)?” The average percentages for each question and each group are presented in the graph below.
| Question 1 (artist) | High School | Art History Assoc. | Museum Studies |
| Definitely | 31% | 70% | 49% |
| Somewhat | 55% | 30% | 37% |
| No | 14 % | NA | 15% |
| Question 2 (painting) | |||
| Definitely | 44% | 70% | 50% |
| Somewhat | 38% | 30% | 45% |
| No | 18% | 0% | 5% |
| Question 3 (visiting) | |||
| Yes | 32% | 80% | 55% |
| No | 26% | 0% | 14% |
| Maybe | 42% | 20% | 31% |
Although we would, of course, have liked to see a larger percentage of the high school evaluations fall into the “definitely” and “yes” categories, given the fact that these students were not predisposed to be interested in art at all, let alone the art of the past, an average of ¾ or more outside of the negative category seems a good sign. One of these students also commented that “It was like finding hidden Easter Eggs and in a way you really learned about the artist by the details that were worked into the painting.” That sort of engagement was exactly what we had hoped for.
These evaluations (except for those given to the Art History Association), were administered during the final editing process and contained additional questions, such as whether anything was confusing, and whether the length of the video was appropriate. Answers to these questions provided feedback that was useful in creating the final edits. In addition to technical comments, we discovered, somewhat to our surprise, that the students felt the videos, originally aimed at 4-5 minutes in length, should be longer, and contain more information (dates, etc.). We have also developed a survey for area art teachers, a copy of which is attached to this report, which has gone out through Survey Monkey along with links to the complete set of videos. We will send those results as soon as we have them.
Aside from the formal evaluations, the first eight videos have garnered positive comments from those who have seen them on the local public television station, where they have been shown on a rotating basis. The first four have also been uploaded to the Digital Wall at the El Paso Museum of History, and to an avatar at the new Border Medical building. The remaining videos should be uploaded soon.
One unanticipated result of the project has been the opportunity to pull together all the available information on the selected paintings, and to dive deeply into each one. Among other insights, there is a strong case for the identification of the Anthony van Dyck portrait as that of Clara Brant Foument, and a much clearer understanding of the context of the artworks, especially those by Botticelli and his workshop, Filippino Lippi, and the Sienese pieces. This information has the potential to be used to engage visitors in new ways and support a more extensive use of the collection in the classroom.
During the two- year grant cycle, the team encountered challenges and learned lessons that could benefit similar projects. Most of the difficulties we faced had to do with the logistics of producing a large number of animated videos, each of which varied enough to make creating a clear production template problematic. For example, some of the paintings lent themselves easily to animation, that is, the artwork offered a lively canvas for telling its story without a great need for additional images. Other paintings, such as the portraits, were more static and needed external images to bring the video to life. This resulted in a lot of time spent identifying additional appropriate images, and a need for larger video files needed to accommodate outside high-resolution images.
The need for outside images had been anticipated in the grant budget, however obtaining permission from institutions proved difficult for two reasons. The turnaround time for responses from various museums was generally quite slow, and made it hard to proceed with the animation within our time frame. Additionally, the policies of most institutions have not caught up with the digital revolution, and are crafted primarily to accommodate the use of images in exhibitions for a limited term. As these videos will be based on the web, it is impossible to edit them in order to remove images after a short-term lease. Because of these factors, almost all outside images were taken from Creative Commons sources.
Working with student interns also produced some bumps along the way. They needed more hands-on management and their work needed more intensive editing (at least initially) than anticipated. This resulted from weakness in their time management, varying degrees of skills, and, in some cases, competition from other paid work. As the project took shape, the team also came to realize the need for multiple skills, including a sense of storyline, imagination, hand-drawing, specific types of editing, as well as animation itself. In addition, we were not able to retain the same set of interns over the course of the project. This meant training new interns in the basic approach to creating the videos, as well as how to work together.
As one of the interns observed in the evaluation, one potential solution to some of the difficulties would have been to divide the tasks for each video by skill, rather than by narrative section, which is what we did for most of the videos. Recruiting interns for specific skills, such as hand-drawing or editing abilities, might also help the process run more smoothly. The intern also commented that meeting more regularly as a group, s/he felt, would have helped keep the creative energy strong. Given the number of individuals involved in the project, scheduling meetings that worked for everyone was difficult, but is something that would probably have benefitted the project. Despite these challenges, the team was, and is, very proud of the resulting videos. Links to all the videos are embedded below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x87GXAqprPU&t=1s
Fontana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_99yok3ACxM&t=1s
Strozzi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGcaUoJq55E&t=23s
Van Dyck
Canaletto, Crespi, Rigaud, Gentileschi, Sustris, Dossi, da Carpi, Lotto, Lippi, Botticelli, Sano di Pietro, Osservanza Master
The Museum Doctor 