Safeguarding the art of Norway's National Museum
The National Museum holds Norway’s most extensive art collection, including national treasures such as “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. They also have an important role in preserving the collections to make them available for future generations.
CHALLENGE
The National Museum wants to engage the public and make art easily available online. To allow this, they are digitizing their physical objects with advanced technologies such as X-rays and 3D scanning. A long-term master copy of these files needs to be safely preserved on a robust storage medium, with no risk of file corruption and preferably with a visual representation together with the data.
Digital-born art is becoming increasingly important, also for the collections of the National Museum. As for physical objects of art, only the original version has an artistic and financial value. It is therefore critical to ensure data authenticity and integrity when preserving digital art.
As part of the long-term strategy and protection of national digital assets, the management made a requirement specification for what they regard as an optimal long-term archival solution. They listed the following 10 characteristics:
- Migration-free
- Self-contained
- Visual representation
- Ensure confidentiality
- Maintain data integrity
- Available on demand at safe location of own choice
- Proven technology
- Safe from electromagnetic pulses
- Low-tech
- Physical robustness
"We wrote a wish list for an ideal preservation solution. After a comprehensive assessment of opportunities in the market, we could not find any technology that could meet the list of requirements in the same way as Piql."
SOLUTION
Long-term preservation of data, on a medium that is migration-free, self-contained, secure and allows visual representation together with the bits and bytes – the National Museum’s requirements were a perfect fit for Piql. We have entered into a long-term collaborative partnership with the common goal of preserving art for the next generations.
Furthermore, some of the National Museum’s most significant objects are safely stored on Norwegian ground in the Arctic World Archive on Svalbard.
FUTURE
As part of a long-term collaboration, Piql and the National Museum of Norway will work together to develop preservation solutions for Norwegian museums.