2009
Wiki loves art NL is an initiative of Creative Commons Netherlands, Wikimedia Netherlands and Stichting Museumnacht Amsterdam (n8). Within this project photography lovers, museums and heritage institutions cooperate to provide online access to photos of art works from Dutch museums and archives under an open Creative Commons license (BY-SA). Subsequently, these pictures are used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.
The aim of the project was to enhance the online encyclopedia Wikipedia with freely available images of Dutch heritage objects; Wikipedia has a great lack of them.
Originally, Wiki loves art is an American initiative of the Brooklyn Museum. Over 45 Dutch museums participated in the event. During the entire month of June 2009 visitors were allowed to photograph the collections. In several museums photographing is usually strictly forbidden. The pictures were uploaded to Flickr with a Creative Commons license.
Many of the over 5000 pictures taken within the project are now used on Wikipedia.
