Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Selects Widen Media Collective To Manage Digital Assets

MADISON, Wis. - March 26, 2014 - PRLog -- The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has selected the Widen Media Collective to support its digital asset management (DAM) needs. The museum, which contains more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts, rare books and decorative arts, will use the DAM to organize and share digital media files with various internal departments and external constituencies.

Prior to partnering with the Widen Media Collective, the museum used a shared drive to organize and distribute digital assets. This system required users to navigate an increasingly complex network of folders and subfolders in order to access needed files.

In 2013, the museum formed a committee to identify a tool to increase operational efficiency  managing and sharing digital assets.

“We knew if we chose a system that was too cumbersome and required a great deal of time to input the data, we would have a difficult time getting people to use the system,” said Lisa Long Feldmann, a former Archivist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum who served as manager for the project. “We chose Widen because it is a robust system that fits a variety of operational needs.”

For arts and cultural institutions, the preservation of and access to digital creations are a major concern. Museum staff will serve as the primary users of the new system, but the Museum is exploring possible outside users access for  journalists, photographers, historians, and the general public. The Museum plans to include a variety of assets including videos, audio, images, and text.  These files were produced as collection documentation, as well as documentation of events, music programming, educational lectures, and marketing.

“Welcoming the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to the Widen family really confirms that a digital asset management project can come to life within any type or size of organization,” said Craig Bollig, senior digital asset management advisor with Widen. “The group at the Gardner Museum leveraged the resources Widen provided for education on DAM, as well as evaluation, planning and getting that all-important approval of the project. DAM is not just for the corporate enterprise, and the group at the Gardner Museum trekked a path that more non-profits and museums will soon follow.”

About Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum – a work of art in totality – is at once an intimate collection of fine and decorative art and a vibrant, innovative venue for contemporary artists, musicians and scholars. Housed in a 1902 building (Willard T. Sears) and modeled after a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, and a 2012 wing designed by Renzo Piano, the Museum provides an unusual backdrop for the viewing of art. The Collection galleries, installed in rooms surrounding the verdant Courtyard contains more than 2,500 paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts, rare books and decorative arts featuring works of art by Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Raphael, Botticelli, Manet, Degas, Whistler and Sargent.

About Widen Enterprises, Inc.

Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Widen has honed its more than 60 years of experience in premedia services and color management specifically for assisting customers with building brand equity and supporting consistent brand representation across print and Web communications. Through its inventive suite of Web-based digital asset management applications, Widen software services provide marketing networks with real-time, Web-based access to clients' digital asset libraries, subsequently eliminating manual search and file preparation time, costs related to replacing images and videos that cannot be located, and added costs for hardware, software and upgrades. For more information, visit: http://www.widen.com.