Washington State University, Vancouver
Public Art Collection
University of Washington, Tacoma
Campus Art Tour
Image of Terminus, granite sculpture by artist Brian Goldbloom (2002)
The dataset for the State Art Collection includes latititude and longitude coordinates for each piece in the collection. Looking at only the pieces at public colleges and universities, I have mapped these coordinates as a density map. The density map shows the concentration of art at higher education institutions along the coast; including but not limited to, the University of Washington's Seattle and Tacoma campuses, Tacoma Community College, and Evergreen State College. While each coordinate contains information about the artwork's institutional home, creator, name, and materials, these are difficult to parse unless the viewer zooms in on a particular area.
To browse an interactive map of the entire state collection, please visit: https://data.wa.gov/d/ki8i-6zaw
A few of Washington's state universities have created campus maps featuring their public art collections. These maps stand out from the density map above in what they select to represent as well as their style of representation. The diversity of these maps reflects the decisions inherent to mapmaking, as Turnbull (1993) describes, "maps are selective: they do not, and cannot, display all there is to know about any given piece of the environment. Secondly, if they are to be maps at all they must directly represent at least some aspects of the landscape" (Maps and Theories, p. 3). In making the density map, I decided to use degrees of color to indicate, on a state-level, where the largest number of pieces in the state art collection (at colleges and universities) are located. The five campus maps presented here offer another way to represent and map these collections.
Turnbull (1993) distinguishes between iconic or pictorial and symbolic or non-pictorial representations in maps (p. 3). The campus maps below are consistent in their uses of symbols to represent art pieces; most commonly, a circle with a letter or number that is associated with a map key. In the complete map documents, linked from each map image, there are sometimes thumbnail images associated with each number / art icon on a separate page. As these maps are likely designed to help visitors to the collection find their way - or plan their route; it is not surprising that the other types of information represented on the maps include campus buildings, roads, and pathways in a traditionally, Western "projective geometry" (Turnbull, Maps - a way of ordering our environment, p. 1).
Washington State University, Vancouver
Public Art Collection
University of Washington, Tacoma
Campus Art Tour
While each of the five maps is stylistically unique, the Western Washington University map is perhaps the most distinct in terms of the angle of its bird's eye view, its pictoral and dimensional representation of campus buildings, and its inclusion of green space (grass, different types of trees). The other four maps are consistent in their use of grayscale for outlining roads and the footprint of campus buildings and then color for their art markers.
A number of the pieces represented in the collection and on these campus maps are large-scale sculptures (see as an example, the video documenting the installation of 'Mammoth' at Central Washington University in July 2018). Given their size and visibility on campus, it is interesting to consider a campus map that reverses its representations: relying on iconic or pictorial representations of these large-scale pieces and symbolic representations of campus buildings.
Video: Installation of "Mammoth" by Ilan Averbuch at Central Washington University
Western Washington University
Outdoor Sculpture Collection
University of Washington, Seattle Campus Art Walking Tour
