SG50: National Gallery launches digital portrait project

The project asks citizens to submit self-portraits, which will be curated and etched on the Art Connector, a permanent 290-metre walkway linking City Hall and Coleman Street. The ultimate goal is to collect enough portraits to be used as elements along the walkway.

MRM/McCann and MediaMonks have developed a digital platform that enables the public to create their portraits online. The agency has enhanced awareness by making the actions shareworthy, achieved through the microsite share function. To drive submissions, the National Gallery is launching a video and an electronic direct marketing initiative.

“This campaign is meaningful and won’t be forgotten,” said Dante Abelarde, creative director MRM/McCann. “Years from now people can still point to their portrait on the Art Connector and say ‘That’s me, I was part of that’”.

A digital solution was vital for crowdsourcing the portraits. Using traditional pen-and-paper methods would make extracting the drawings for design use resource-intensive: scanning, cleaning up and converting several vector files while keeping thousands of user IDs intact would have proved cumbersome. A web-solution allows more people to submit and is useful for those who cannot make it to the on-ground events.

The completed Art Connector will be unveiled to the public in November 2015 with a capstone festive carnival, rounding up the SG50 celebrations.