Flemish Art Collection and meemoo join forces for digital initiatives in Flemish museums
19 Dec 2023Starting in January 2024, the Flemish Art Collection’s digitisation efforts are being integrated into meemoo’s activities. The Flemish Art Collection (VKC) is a collaborative network of visual arts museums dedicated to image and data policy in Flemish museums. Meemoo focuses on the digital archiving practices of cultural, media and government organisations. Following our intensive collaboration over recent years, we are formally uniting our strengths from 2024.
VKC began as a partnership of fine arts museums with a significant emphasis on international engagement. Recently, they have concentrated on enriching and reusing museum data within Flemish museums. The organisation pioneered an ecosystem that makes digital content from various museums available for reuse, both internally and externally.
A tale of collaboration
We have often collaborated with VKC in the past – and repeatedly drawn on each other’s expertise, finding common ground in projects or initiatives launched by museums or the Flemish government. Both VKC and meemoo have partnered with museums to support their digital processes, including normalising and standardising their collection data, making their digital collections available for reuse, and automating a variety of other museum processes.
We have also been jointly involved in the project for the Flemish Heritage Databases from the outset, where a new collection management system will replace the current databases, Erfgoedplus and Erfgoedinzicht. Moreover, we are both leading initiatives such as the IIIF peer group and the Cultural Heritage and Copyright user group.
It’s clear that our organisations already share a strong vision, and now the Flemish Government has put forward plans to incorporate VKC’s digital operations into meemoo from 2024.
On November 30, at the GIVE project showcase, Minister Jambon stated,
'As part of the first phase of the Digital Transformation programme, I have also decided to add the Flemish Art Collection’s operations to meemoo, and integrate these two organisations. This will maximise economies of scale and efficiency gains, and evolve towards a more coherent offering of digital services.'
What this means for the future
A new management agreement will start for meemoo in 2026. Leading up to this, we will take time to make new plans for our digital services in terms of museum practices and needs.
Until then: continuity
VKC’s ongoing commitments to museums will continue in the run-up to the ultimate integration. The focus on data standardisation and normalisation will be maintained, and the VKC ecosystem (link in Dutch)will be further supported for the participating museums. In the future, you will still be able to browse the fine arts museums’ joint collections. The emphasis on IIIF will continue and the Summer Course for the Study of the Arts in Flanders will also be organised and temporarily housed at meemoo.
We’ve been available at the same address since April 2023 – easing the transition into our new chapter. We’re excited to set sail on this journey together!
About the Flemish Art Collection
At the end of 2001, the KMSKA (Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp), MSK Gent (Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent) and Groeninge Museum (Musea Brugge) opted for an extensive collaboration within VKC. By joining forces, the three partner museums aimed to counterbalance the Dutch RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History). They received support from the Flemish Government to enhance the international presence of the Flemish collections. Mu.ZEE and M Leuven also joined the organisation at a later date.
The mutual consultation between the museums not only spurred joint initiatives and smoothed the lending process, but also fostered good cooperation. At the same time, VKC bridged the gap to policy through research, memoranda, joint lobbying and international promotion.
As part of this international promotion, VKC gradually shifted its focus to the digital accessibility of collections. This initially took place through a joint collection presentation and themed websites (about the Flemish primitives, Bruegel, baroque, Ensor, Minne and abstract modernism), with a shared technical infrastructure – the VKC ecosystem – then also being established for the museums. This proved to be a blueprint for future infrastructures, which is beneficial for all museums and other collection managers. The work culminated not only in a collection section where the VKC partner museums’ collections are brought together on a single platform, but also in various digital tools that facilitate numerous museum processes.