Hasil untuk "Museums. Collectors and collecting"

Keisuke Kawahara, Tai Tsuchizawa, Noritsugu Yamamoto et al.

Increasing datacenter demands require power-efficient optical interconnects. However, a conventional standard transmitter using a silicon rib-waveguide Mach-Zehnder modulator and voltage-mode driver has low efficiency and consumes watt-class high power and occupies a several-square-millimeter footprint, which limits large-scale integration for parallel transmission. This paper presents a transmitter consisting of a compact photonic crystal waveguide (PCW) modulator and a current-mode open-collector driver. The PCW modulator is designed to have high impedance in addition to the slow-light effect. The driver connected to the modulator without termination resistors is optimized based on electronics-photonics co-simulations using a standard electronic circuit simulator with an in-house photonic model library. Co-packaging these dramatically reduces the power consumption to 50 mW and a bit energy to 0.78 pJ/bit at 64-Gbaud, and the footprint to 0.66 mm2. This result represents a significant advancement toward the integration of a large number of transmission channels with no temperature control.

Linsheng Hou, Wenwu Lu, Yanan Wang et al.

The strawberry farming is labor-intensive, particularly in tasks requiring dexterous manipulation such as picking occluded strawberries. To address this challenge, we present the Strawberry Robotic Operation Interface (SROI), an open-source device designed for collecting dexterous manipulation data in robotic strawberry farming. The SROI features a handheld unit with a modular end effector, a stereo robotic camera, enabling the easy collection of demonstration data in field environments. A data post-processing pipeline is introduced to extract spatial trajectories and gripper states from the collected data. Additionally, we release an open-source dataset of strawberry picking demonstrations to facilitate research in dexterous robotic manipulation. The SROI represents a step toward automating complex strawberry farming tasks, reducing reliance on manual labor.

Jiugeng Sun, Rita Sevastjanova, Sina Ahmadi et al.

Dialects suffer from the scarcity of computational textual resources as they exist predominantly in spoken rather than written form and exhibit remarkable geographical diversity. Collecting dialect data and subsequently integrating it into current language technologies present significant obstacles. Gamification has been proven to facilitate remote data collection processes with great ease and on a substantially wider scale. This paper introduces Dia-Lingle, a gamified interface aimed to improve and facilitate dialectal data collection tasks such as corpus expansion and dialect labelling. The platform features two key components: the first challenges users to rewrite sentences in their dialects, identifies them through a classifier and solicits feedback, and the other one asks users to match sentences to their geographical locations. Dia-Lingle combines active learning with gamified difficulty levels, strategically encouraging prolonged user engagement while efficiently enriching the dialect corpus. Usability evaluation shows that our interface demonstrates high levels of user satisfaction. We provide the link to Dia-Lingle: https://dia-lingle.ivia.ch/, and demo video: https://youtu.be/0QyJsB8ym64.

Xiyao Mei, Yu Zhang, Chaofan Yang et al.

Historical visualizations are a valuable resource for studying the history of visualization and inspecting the cultural context where they were created. When investigating historical visualizations, it is essential to consider contributions from different cultural frameworks to gain a comprehensive understanding. While there is extensive research on historical visualizations within the European cultural framework, this work shifts the focus to ancient China, a cultural context that remains underexplored by visualization researchers. To this aim, we propose a semi-automatic pipeline to collect, extract, and label historical Chinese visualizations. Through the pipeline, we curate ZuantuSet, a dataset with over 71K visualizations and 108K illustrations. We analyze distinctive design patterns of historical Chinese visualizations and their potential causes within the context of Chinese history and culture. We illustrate potential usage scenarios for this dataset, summarize the unique challenges and solutions associated with collecting historical Chinese visualizations, and outline future research directions.

Yidan Zhang, Mutian Xu, Yiming Hao et al.

Facing scaling laws, video data from the internet becomes increasingly important. However, collecting extensive videos that meet specific needs is extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming. In this work, we study the way to expedite this collection process and propose VC-Agent, the first interactive agent that is able to understand users' queries and feedback, and accordingly retrieve/scale up relevant video clips with minimal user input. Specifically, considering the user interface, our agent defines various user-friendly ways for the user to specify requirements based on textual descriptions and confirmations. As for agent functions, we leverage existing multi-modal large language models to connect the user's requirements with the video content. More importantly, we propose two novel filtering policies that can be updated when user interaction is continually performed. Finally, we provide a new benchmark for personalized video dataset collection, and carefully conduct the user study to verify our agent's usage in various real scenarios. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our agent for customized video dataset collection. Project page: https://allenyidan.github.io/vcagent_page/.

Pragya Singh, Ankush Gupta, Mohan Kumar et al.

Emotional and mental well-being are vital components of quality of life, and with the rise of smart devices like smartphones, wearables, and artificial intelligence (AI), new opportunities for monitoring emotions in everyday settings have emerged. However, for AI algorithms to be effective, they require high-quality data and accurate annotations. As the focus shifts towards collecting emotion data in real-world environments to capture more authentic emotional experiences, the process of gathering emotion annotations has become increasingly complex. This work explores the challenges of everyday emotion data collection from the perspectives of key stakeholders. We collected 75 survey responses, performed 32 interviews with the public, and 3 focus group discussions (FGDs) with 12 mental health professionals. The insights gained from a total of 119 stakeholders informed the development of our framework, AnnoSense, designed to support everyday emotion data collection for AI. This framework was then evaluated by 25 emotion AI experts for its clarity, usefulness, and adaptability. Lastly, we discuss the potential next steps and implications of AnnoSense for future research in emotion AI, highlighting its potential to enhance the collection and analysis of emotion data in real-world contexts.

Jean-Philippe Uzel

From 2008 to 2015, the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) sought to shed light on the residential school system to which 150,000 children were sent over the course of a century, with the aim of forcibly Christianizing and “Westernizing” them. The TRC's final report, which concludes that a veritable “cultural genocide” took place, proposes 94 calls to action to right the wrongs of the past. Many of these are addressed to the Canadian art world and museums and have the particularity of placing the museum in the role of healer. This healing, a key element in the reconciliation process, is primarily concerned with the “survivors” of the residential schools, i.e. the indigenous students who suffered physical, sexual and psychological abuse, the after-effects of which are still felt today. In recent years, however, the theme of reconciliation has gradually given way to that of decolonization. This paradigm shift affects all Canadian institutions, but particularly museums, whose colonial history is at the very heart of their collections. But what of the curatorial function of museums in this paradigm shift? The aim of this article is to show that, in the age of decolonization, the healing museum is subject to a divided understanding that lies at the heart of the recent crisis in Canadian museums.

Mingtao Yue, Tomomi Sayuda, Miles Pennington et al.

Appearance-based gaze estimation, which uses only a regular camera to estimate human gaze, is important in various application fields. While the technique faces data bias issues, data collection protocol is often demanding, and collecting data from a wide range of participants is difficult. It is an important challenge to design opportunities that allow a diverse range of people to participate while ensuring the quality of the training data. To tackle this challenge, we introduce a novel gamified approach for collecting training data. In this game, two players communicate words via eye gaze through a transparent letter board. Images captured during gameplay serve as valuable training data for gaze estimation models. The game is designed as a physical installation that involves communication between players, and it is expected to attract the interest of diverse participants. We assess the game's significance on data quality and user experience through a comparative user study.

Guy Aridor, Duarte Goncalves, Ruoyan Kong et al.

An increasingly important aspect of designing recommender systems involves considering how recommendations will influence consumer choices. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a method for collecting user beliefs about un-experienced items - a critical predictor of choice behavior. We implemented this method on the MovieLens platform, resulting in a rich dataset that combines user ratings, beliefs, and observed recommendations. We document challenges to such data collection, including selection bias in response and limited coverage of the product space. This unique resource empowers researchers to delve deeper into user behavior and analyze user choices absent recommendations, measure the effectiveness of recommendations, and prototype algorithms that leverage user belief data, ultimately leading to more impactful recommender systems. The dataset can be found at https://grouplens.org/datasets/movielens/ml_belief_2024/.

Suvir Mirchandani, David D. Yuan, Kaylee Burns et al.

In recent years, imitation learning from large-scale human demonstrations has emerged as a promising paradigm for training robot policies. However, the burden of collecting large quantities of human demonstrations is significant in terms of collection time and the need for access to expert operators. We introduce a new data collection paradigm, RoboCrowd, which distributes the workload by utilizing crowdsourcing principles and incentive design. RoboCrowd helps enable scalable data collection and facilitates more efficient learning of robot policies. We build RoboCrowd on top of ALOHA (Zhao et al. 2023) -- a bimanual platform that supports data collection via puppeteering -- to explore the design space for crowdsourcing in-person demonstrations in a public environment. We propose three classes of incentive mechanisms to appeal to users' varying sources of motivation for interacting with the system: material rewards, intrinsic interest, and social comparison. We instantiate these incentives through tasks that include physical rewards, engaging or challenging manipulations, as well as gamification elements such as a leaderboard. We conduct a large-scale, two-week field experiment in which the platform is situated in a university cafe. We observe significant engagement with the system -- over 200 individuals independently volunteered to provide a total of over 800 interaction episodes. Our findings validate the proposed incentives as mechanisms for shaping users' data quantity and quality. Further, we demonstrate that the crowdsourced data can serve as useful pre-training data for policies fine-tuned on expert demonstrations -- boosting performance up to 20% compared to when this data is not available. These results suggest the potential for RoboCrowd to reduce the burden of robot data collection by carefully implementing crowdsourcing and incentive design principles.

Sujitha Sathiyamoorthy, N Mohana, Anusha Prakash et al.

The performance of a text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis model depends on various factors, of which the quality of the training data is of utmost importance. Millions of data are collected around the globe for various languages, but resources for Indian languages are few. Although there are many efforts involved in data collection, a common set of protocols for data collection becomes necessary for building TTS systems in Indian languages primarily because of the need for a uniform development of TTS systems across languages. In this paper, we present our learnings on data collection efforts' for Indic languages over 15 years. These databases have been used in unit selection synthesis, hidden Markov model based, and end-to-end frameworks, and for generating prosodically rich TTS systems. The most significant feature of the data collected is that data purity enables building high-quality TTS systems with a comparatively small dataset compared to that of European/Chinese languages.

Angela Strauß

Research into the history of collections can shed light not only on the epistemic, but also the political and economic dimensions of the objects that museums collect. This article explores these dimensions through the study of acquisitions in the mineralogical collections of the Natural History Museum Berlin. During the nineteenth century, appropriation processes were increasingly shaped by economic arguments and political perspectives. After the German Empire became a colonial power in the 1880s, rocks and minerals from Africa, particularly Namibia and Tanzania, were seized. Ultimately, contemporary museums must take responsibility for their past collecting practices because their collections are built upon those practices.

Hubert Czachowski

Ta Gauguinowska fraza użyta w tytule referatu posłużyła autorowi do przedstawienia drogi, jaką przechodziło muzealnictwo etnograficzne od swych początków w XIX wieku, przekształcenia paradygmatów w drugiej połowie wieku XX, po czasy współczesne, charakteryzujące się dużą zmianą zakresu etnologii i antropologii. Rodzi się bowiem podstawowe pytanie: czy i jak muzea etnograficzne mają odpowiedzieć na dokonujące się dziś zasadnicze zmiany w dyscyplinie? Istotne jest także pytanie o to, co zrobić z dotychczasowym dziedzictwem etnograficznych muzeów, także w kontekście bardzo silnej tendencji dekolonizacyjnej, która we współczesnej antropologii staje się dogmatem. I dotyczy to również — przez analogie — niekolonialnych przecież zbiorów polskich lub kolonialnych inaczej.

T. V. D. Molen

Carel Joseph Fodor (1801-1860) was an avid art collector. When he died, at the age of 59, he had amassed an impressive collection of 161 paintings, 877 drawings and 302 prints, which he bequeathed to the city of Amsterdam. Since 1963 that collection has been part of the collection of the Amsterdam Museum. A conspicuous feature of Fodor’s collection is that he did not collect Old Master paintings. Old Master painters and their most famous works did enter the collection in another way: in reproduction. More specifically, by means of copies in a variety of mediums: painted and in print, but particularly drawn. Fodor’s collection forms an excellent case to explore the popularity of drawn reproduction in the 18th and 19th century. It offered collectors like Fodor the double joy of appreciating the skill of the copyist and the reference to the original painting.

S. Ryder, L. Livermore, Olga Sivell et al.

Sir Joseph Banks is remembered for being a long-standing president of the Royal Society, the unofficial first director of Kew gardens and the pioneering naturalist on Captain James Cook’s great voyage onboard the Endeavour, to observe the transit of Venus and search for an undiscovered southern continent (British Museum (Natural History) 1906). Much of Bank’s life is well documented but his surviving entomology collection has never been accurately catalogued. The Banks Collection at the Natural History Museum (NHM) London is an historic assemblage of insect specimens (Fig. 1, British Museum (Natural History) 1906). It includes specimens collected by Banks and others acquired through a world-wide network of collectors. During his lifetime, Banks shared specimens with his associates and gave many specimens to Dr. William Hunter and Johan Christian Fabricius. After his death, the remaining collection was donated to the Linnean Society and later passed to the British Museum in 1863. The Banks Collection has both historical and cultural value and continues to be a relevant research tool. This is largely because Fabricius, a student of Carl Linnaeus, described many new species from the collection. Consequently, the collection contains many taxonomically important type specimens. The number of specimens in the collection is unknown but estimated to be approximately 4000. The NHM is digitising the collection with the generous support of the Charles Hayward Foundation. The collection is housed in 55 entomological glass-topped drawers, albeit not the original drawers. When conserving historical material, there is an argument to leave everything in its original state, but after much consideration, the curatorial team decided—for the long-term preservation of the collection—the specimens should be rehoused into plastazote®-lined drawers keeping the original layout of the specimens and replacing the current cork-lined drawers as part of the digitisation process. High-resolution images are taken of every specimen with its associated labels. The information on the labels is recorded for each specimen and a barcode added. As of August 2024, 3,300 specimens have been digitised and 30 of the 55 drawers recurated. More than 5000 high-resolution images have been taken (Fig. 2) and 438 labels have been transcribed for almost 1200 specimens. This project is using a new Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) data standard, Latimer Core, designed to support the representation and discovery of natural science collections (Woodburn et al. 2022). Latimer Core is intended to be complimentary to specimen-level standards such as Darwin Core (Darwin Core Task Group 2009), providing a way to structure and share higher-level information about groups of collection objects, from whole-museum collections through thematic and historic collections, to the contents of a single drawer. This is useful for collections with lots of associated data, fragile specimens or when displacement and disassociation of information is a concern. Unlike modern specimens, with data labels containing information on collecting event and associated persons, specimens in the Banks collection have few original labels. It was common practice that labels were temporary data storage and disposed of once the data was published. A replacement label was provided after publication (Fig. 2). The publication provides species description, geographic origin and often the name of the collection containing the specimen. Additional labels were subsequently added by curators and researchers. Many specimens have no data labels (Fig. 3). Unravelling important information about individual specimens, species and groups of specimens in this collection, including taxonomic, type status and origin will be supported by Latimer Core, as it allows a more holistic approach compared to only using specimen-level data. We can better incorporate data derived from various sources such as published data, illustrations and personal correspondence to learn about the individual and groups of specimens, the reverse of the usual workflow. Digitising this collection will improve access through digital records (specimen/drawer images, transcribed labels, publication references) reducing the need for physical examination and risk of damage. Whole-drawer digitisation in addition to specimen-level imaging provides information on the organisation and display of a collection. A collection of this nature demands minimal handling and the best storage and collections management procedures to ensure its survival for future generations. However, its significance commands a continued interest by a wide and varied audience. By digitising this collection, we will improve its physical housing, increase its accessibility without compromising the specimens for the future, and support the publication of a comprehensive catalogue of the collection.

M. . Ahire

ArtSpace is a revolutionary digital platform that redefines the landscape of artistic expression, community engagement, and creative collaboration. With a mission to democratize the art world and empower artists, enthusiasts, and collectors alike, ArtSpace serves as a dynamic ecosystem where creativity knows no bounds. This abstract explores the essence of ArtSpace, delving into its key features, impact on the artistic community, and vision for the future. At its core, ArtSpace is a hub of creativity, innovation, and inspiration. Artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines converge on the platform to showcase their work, connect with fellow creators, and engage with a global audience. Through intuitive tools and interactive features, artists can upload their artwork, curate their portfolios, and interact with enthusiasts who share their passion for art. One of the defining features of ArtSpace is its emphasis on community building and collaboration. Enthusiasts can explore a rich tapestry of artwork spanning various genres, styles, and mediums, from traditional paintings and sculptures to cutting-edge digital art and multimedia installations. Through voting mechanisms, comments sections, and social sharing options, users can actively participate in shaping the narrative of the art world, fostering a sense of belonging and camaraderie within the community. ArtSpace serves as a catalyst for discovery, exploration, and engagement, offering users an immersive experience that transcends the boundaries of traditional art galleries and museums. By harnessing the power of technology, ArtSpace leverages augmented reality, virtual exhibitions, and interactive experiences to bring artwork to life in new and exciting ways. Users can immerse themselves in virtual galleries, interact with 3D models of sculptures, and experience multimedia installations from the comfort of their homes. Moreover, ArtSpace is more than just a platform for showcasing artwork—it is a marketplace, a classroom, and a cultural hub rolled into one. Artists can monetize their creations through sales, commissions, and collaborations, while enthusiasts can discover and collect unique pieces that resonate with their tastes and preferences. Educational resources, workshops, and tutorials provide aspiring artists with the tools and knowledge they need to hone their craft and pursue their passion for art. Key Words: art, music, creative space, mobile application, gallery.

Marfa V. Kuznetsova

The article examines the role of merchant, philanthropist, and collector Kozma Soldatenkov in the artistic landscape of Moscow during the 1850s-1890s. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of Soldatenkov on the formation of museum and exhibition programs in Moscow. By analyzing his art collection and his activities as a collector, we can gain a deeper understanding of his contribution to the cultural landscape of the city. This research is based on a systematic historical approach that allows us to contextualize Soldatenkov's work within the broader context of art collecting and cultural development. The purpose of the article is to determine the contribution that he made to the development of museum and exhibition practices in Moscow, at a time when there was an increased interest not only in domestic art collecting, but also in addressing theoretical and practical challenges of artistic production. The scientific novelty of this study lies in the absence of works in Russian historiography that summarize the achievements of second-half XIX century Moscow collectors in the field of culture, focusing on Soldatenkov's position as one of the first collectors in Moscow's cultural landscape. This research is relevant due to the growing interest in understanding various aspects of collecting history in the XIXth century. Familiarity with the sources allows us to conclude that the Soldatenkov collection had been well-known to the artistic community for a long time, and its owner was not absent from the main events of cultural life. He invested heavily in the creation of public museum spaces in Moscow, and his collection itself served as a reflection of his cultural and social standing. It was a clear indicator of his support for Russian artists and his desire to strengthen the artistic life in the city.

C. Meyer

In recent decades, entomologists and entomological collecting have experienced significant culture shock as countries have rapidly changed their regulations regarding collecting and export permits for insects. Beginning in the 1960s, countries across the globe began enacting strict wildlife and environmental protection acts, which heavily regulated wildlife collecting in response to environmentalism and emerging ecological concerns after World War II. However, many of these early acts either purposefully or accidentally excluded insects from their legal definitions, as insects were seemingly not regarded as a resource to be monitored at the same level as vertebrates. Thus, entomologists were less impacted by regulatory requirements that focused more heavily on vertebrate and botanical samples and ignored invertebrates unless they were endangered or Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) restricted. This perception began to shift in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as countries began reviewing and tightening their earlier wildlife protection acts. Previous editions were amended to include broader definitions of animals or wildlife that included invertebrates. Over the last 25 years, the field of entomology has seen a gradual but steady shift in the phrasing, both in wildlife protection acts and in collecting permits and export permits, which has come to include insects. As the regulatory landscape for insect collecting has changed, entomological collections in natural history museums are forced to update their procedures to keep pace with these international laws and new legal compliance requirements (Ministry of the Environment of Brazil 2022, Ministry of Environment and Tourism Namibia 2024, Silva and Oliveira 2017). These procedural updates help preserve biodiversity by providing a framework for ethical collecting and Access and Benefit Sharing with countries that host that biodiversity. For the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s (NMNH) Department of Entomology, this has involved a multi-phase change in registration practice. First, the Office of the Registrar (OR) partnered with the Department of Entomology to hire a dedicated registrar who worked in the OR but was permanently detailed to Entomology. Second, both departments are working together to update procedures related to documentation and regulatory compliance. Finally, the departments are setting standards for new acquisitions to promote advanced planning for collecting expeditions and acceptance of large scale donations. Each phase helps bring the department into full legal compliance with global standards. Complicating this issue is nearly 50 years of diverse registration practices, from non-standardized to haphazard, which resulted in a significant backlog. This created the daunting task of resolving 1,700+ legacy acquisitions using a contemporary framework. The NMNH defines a legacy acquisition as any acquisition that is older than two years, where the museum has not a) secured a signed Deed of Gift and/or b) not secured adequate provenance information regarding collecting agreements and permits. Because these acquisitions were not finalized at the time of their collection, in order to do so now, they must stand up to more rigorous modern standards. For instance, the Department must conduct research to establish provenance information proving that permits were not needed at the time for collection or export of the materials. How do we resolve legacy acquisitions with modern standards and with difficult and often contradictory laws regarding wildlife collection by scientists? Doing so can prove challenging based on the available information in the original record. As with all best practices, the standards of what level of information was recorded at the time of acquisition differs greatly, with some records showing only the most top level information (e.g., “9,000 insects, Diptera primarily, USA”). Some of the methods deployed by the Registrar’s Office include: Looking for the original holotype manuscript if the original transaction record lists holotypes or paratype specimens. A manuscript that lists the NMNH as a designated repository can stand in as intent to donate. Conducting significant legal research into the country where the specimens are said to have originated from, related to the date of the acquisition, to see how wildlife was and is defined in protection laws. Researching the donor through recent publications to attempt to find their most recent affiliation and contact information (and whether they are still living). Taking advantage of correspondence notes left behind by previous curators to find mention of incoming donations that correlate to dates of receipt. Looking for the original holotype manuscript if the original transaction record lists holotypes or paratype specimens. A manuscript that lists the NMNH as a designated repository can stand in as intent to donate. Conducting significant legal research into the country where the specimens are said to have originated from, related to the date of the acquisition, to see how wildlife was and is defined in protection laws. Researching the donor through recent publications to attempt to find their most recent affiliation and contact information (and whether they are still living). Taking advantage of correspondence notes left behind by previous curators to find mention of incoming donations that correlate to dates of receipt. How do we better inform and educate collectors and scientists about new regulations and registration practices? The joint departments of OR and Entomology are working to slowly change the perception of registrarial work with entomologists. Department researchers are encouraged to share their travel plans ahead of time with the registrar, so that guidance can be given in regards to what permits are needed. When permits are able to be obtained prior to travel, they are often shared with the registrar ahead of time for review, so that they can advise on what, if any, extra documentation or permissions the researcher should obtain before leaving. Trainings in registrar procedures is ongoing and quarterly, to help familiarize researchers with the procedures and explain why certain questions are asked. Donors are asked to fill out a provenance statement form, which asks if permits were needed at the time of collection. Documenting proper provenance and legal title has become increasingly critical as international legislation continues to evolve following the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefits Sharing, and as a result, one can expect increased difficulty in the collection and accessioning of entomological specimens. Any cultural heritage institution can use the methods highlighted above to build a robust, responsible program for documenting provenance context for legacy acquisitions and appropriately documenting future entomology acquisitions.

Alexey P. Leontiev

I.N. Smirnov’s outstanding contribution to the collection of cultural, household and religious faiths items of the Chuvash people was not subjected to in-depth analysis, nor yet covered by professional researchers. Meanwhile, in the history of collecting Chuvash ethnographic collections in the pre-revolutionary period, there was no figure equal to Ivan Nikolaevich. He was at the origin of forming the funds of the ethnographic department of the Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III. In the year of its opening, he donated a rich «Chuvash collection» to the museum – 92 items, mostly antique embroidery. The purpose of the study is to trace the stages of I.N. Smirnov’s selfless work in the field of collecting ethnographic objects, including photo illustrations from the Chuvash everyday life. Materials and methods. The research was based on newly identified documents stored in the archive of the Russian Museum of Ethnography and the Scientific Archive of the Chuvash State Institute of Humanities, as well as published materials. The principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency were used, as well as research methods: factual, descriptive, analytical, problem-chronological ones were used. Study results. Among numerous works on research and collecting activities of Professor I.N. Smirnov, a special article about his contribution to compiling the Chuvash collections appears for the first time. It provides brief information on cooperation of the ethnographer-collector with the Museum of Russian Studies at Kazan University. However, it mainly tells about his fruitful ties with the Russian Ethnographic Museum. We revealed that during 1902–1904 Ivan Nikolaevich presented 9 Chuvash collections to St. Petersburg repository of ancient ethnographic items – about 1110 works of ornamental art and household items in total, the collector calls them «folk antiquity, original, beautiful», which «melts every year», since he «went to the Chuvash and the Cheremis 12 years ago, went last year… and I found a huge change: things that used to be found in almost every house could not be obtained in the whole village». We analyzed the contents of the catalogue of collections presented to the museum, fortunately, on the initiative of N.V. Nikolsky, a student and follower of Ivan Nikolaevich’s work, this truly original document turned out to be in his Manuscript Collection, now stored in Department I of the Scientific Archive at the Chuvash State Institute of Humanities. Conclusions. Biographical materials published to date about Professor I.N. Smirnov give only a passing mention of his activities in collecting Chuvash ethnographic items for museums. This article makes an attempt to comprehensively cover the path of the researcher-collector. In the author’s opinion, the catalogue of collections, originally stored in the Scientific Archive at the Chuvash State Institute of Humanities, as well as reports and correspondence of the professor on ethnographic expeditions in governorates densely inhabited by the Chuvash, should be published in a separate book.

Vrinda Agrawal

The Government Museum and Art Gallery of Chandigarh was established to fill a cultural vacuum in post-partition Punjab. It received the seed of its collection from Lahore and the rest was amassed by M. S. Randhawa (1909–1986), an Indian Civil Service officer with a love for painting that at the time was identified as “Kangra” for its style and association with the eponymous region and kingdom. In the 1950s, he spent considerable time traveling in the western Himalayas, tracking down paintings and acquiring them for the museum. The many volumes of correspondence that he later bequeathed to the museum reveal how collections of early modern Pahari paintings were rapidly dispersing to form new collections elsewhere. Through the lens of the bureaucrat-collector Randhawa, this article sheds light on the complex history of collecting in mid-twentieth-century South Asia. In tracing the movement of paintings from private royal collections to a public government museum, the article approaches provenance as biography with the goal to contribute to collective efforts of mapping networks that connect collections and collectors.