Since its beginning, MAPA has produced and protected documents from different supports that account for the changes and continuities of folk art nationwide and worldwide and its own institutional history. Throughout time, various measures that favored the maintenance of documents and gave the archive task a professional status have been taken. Its milestone was its formation as a sphere in 2021.
The first task of this sphere was to make a preliminary cadastre of the supports, amount, and locations gathered by the Archive and prioritize teamwork. In 2022, the photographic funds were in the spotlight due to the need to gradually spread the Archive to the public. We bided in a public tender to design a digital catalog to achieve this. The fulfillment of this objective required different archival works such as cataloging, description, preservation, digitalization, and mediation. In the first stage, these works were made on some of the photos from the base.
The project was called “A New Window to MAPA: Knowing the Photographic Archive” Nº656551 and was funded by the National Fund for the Development of Culture and the Arts (FONDART), Regional Fund, Open Counter 2023. The project gave rise to this website, which is easy to use, and other activities related to the dissemination of photography and the labor of the Archive. In the future, it is expected to keep doing these works with other documents from the MAPA base.
Credits
- Investigation, Dissemination, and Project Manager: Romina Oñate
- Conservation, Digitalization, and Photographic Research: Daniela Sierra
- Photographic Research Support: Felipe Quijada
- Photographic Archive Consultancy: Cenfoto from Universidad Diego Portales (UDP)
- Digitalization Equipment: Libraries and Information Services Department (SISIB) from Universidad de Chile.
- Web Design: Elena González
- Web Development: Sebastián Fuenzalida
- Voice Reader: ReadSpeaker
- Spanish-English Translation: Sebastián Jerez
- Haptics Mediation Support: Central Library for the Blind
- Visuo-tactile Material Printing: Tactile Cartography Center (CETAT) from Universidad Tecnológica de Santiago (UTEM).