'It's a museum quality art collection': Why New Bedford Library is digitizing its artwork
NEW BEDFORD — As the impressive "museum quality" art collection continues to grow on the third floor of the New Bedford Free Public Library — in a way to become more accessible — it's now going digital.
"As a library, one of the things we're really interested in is providing easy access to things," said Alexandra Copeland, the library's art curator.
Over the next month, the library is working with photographer Phil Mello to photograph every art piece they have on their walls or archived in their drawers.
About 99% of the library's paintings are on the walls, with the exception of poor condition or duplicated pieces that is stored away for later use. The art ranges from early 1800s to modern art such as Albert Bierstadt to all 432 bird drawings in the Audubon's Birds of America collection.
"It's a museum quality art collection that we have available for the public for free," Copeland added. "We have a collection that rivals Boston Public Library."
Attracting more attention to the art
Since 1852, the New Bedford Free Public Library has been collecting donated art from books to other items from the New Bedford Social Library. The first painting acquired was a portrait of William Roach.
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Thirteen years ago, the library hired its first art curator, who formalized the way the art collection was handled. In October 2019, Copeland joined the team.
"I've tried to create an environment where my personal philosophy is if the only thing you take from a painting or from a piece of art is 'I like it' or 'I don't like it,' that's fine," she said.
Copeland said she wishes there was more foot traffic on the third floor, adding that it's most active when students come for field trips — but they sadly rarely come back.
"If you don't know anything about art, that you can still come here and enjoy the experience even if it's for just a minute," she said.
Richard Csaplar of Dartmouth said he tries to visit the third floor art room once a year when visiting New Bedford.
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"Every old library is a museum," he said. "There are spectacular works here. I don't understand why it's not a promoted in a way of like putting traveling expositions together.
"I don't think people realize what's up here."
How to view the artwork
Copeland, who is the midst of taking every piece of art off the walls and rehanging each one in the meeting room to be photographed, said she hopes digitizing the art will attract more interest — especially to people who still don't know about all the art the library has to offer.
"We don't want any barriers. People should be able to search the collection online to view our images and make it a resource to them," she said, adding the new and updated online database will be available in early fall.
"I hope these kinds of projects will generate a little bit of interest that might get people to come in and see what work we've got going on up here."
Standard-Times staff writer Seth Chitwood can be reached at schitwood@s-t.com. Follow him on twitter: @ChitwoodReports. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.
This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New Bedford Free Public Library digitizes art for online resource
