Quire and 18th-century Cocktails

[kristhayer11]

In “Alcohol’s Empire,” Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) staff sought to design a native digital project specifically to test Quire, a publishing framework created by the Getty Museum, to evaluate its potential for future use at Mia and determine what types of projects are good fits for Quire, and for digital publishing in general. The project began in 2018 and had a very short production schedule, limited budget, and a small in-house team. The nature of “Alcohol’s Empire” proved to be a good test of the platform: it was a collaborative project with three distinct partners who each contributed content to and reviewed the publication at various stages of production. Alcohol’s Empire (https://artsmia.github.io/alcohols-empire/) published in February, 2019. A full case study description, with wins, challenges, and workflow infographics, can be found here: https://new.artsmia.org/art-artists/research/case-studies/quire-alcohols-empire

Project goals

• Conduct a test case for Quire digital publication platform to determine skillset, resource, and workflow requirements, and, overall, its applicability to future Mia content development and publication projects
• Document the results and process of a multi-party collaborative project with a suite of outcomes including a gallery installation, research products, video, and public programs.
• Publish recipes, scholarly essays, and other media with a small team and limited budget using a platform that a) presents as a scholarly publication, b) is stable, and c) is accessible by a worldwide audience.

Our next Quire project

Currently in development is a catalogue raissoné, “Highpoint Editions: A History & Catalogue, 2001–2021.” With this project, we have built an API which Quire uses to pull text and images dynamically from our databases (TMS and Mediabin). This publication is scheduled to publish in October, 2021, and will feature more than 300 works by 39 artists, scholarly essays, artist bios, and an illustrated glossary.