Tuesday 21 August 2007

New Zealand galleries on Wikipedia

There's some fuss in the news at the moment over WikiScanner, a data-mining tool that matches ISP addresses to edits on Wikipedia. Using WikiScanner, people have been able to trace corporations (including Wal-Mart) making changes to pages related to their business. See Russell Brown on Hard News for the New Zealand-related story.

Thinking about this, I decided to check out the Wikipedia entries for various NZ art galleries:

Auckland Art Gallery
Sarjeant Art Gallery
City Gallery Wellington
Christchurch Art Gallery
Dunedin Public Art Gallery

Of these, the DPAG has by far the fullest entry; the AAG, CGW, CAG and Sarjeant are all stubs (and tend to focus more on architecture than art). None of the pages list the directors or other senior staff at the galleries; none provide information about current exhibitions. The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery doesn't have an entry (although there's a full entry on Len Lye).

The Te Papa entry makes interesting reading. The Collections section makes mention only of the giant squid; there are also Controversy and Trivia sections.

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