Modern mural art on mural.ch
mural.ch portal is a publicly accessible data collection.
20 years ago Alex Winiger founded the online documentation mural.ch. The initial objective was to create an accompanying documentation for his own murals, which would allow evolving or underpinning approaches and artistic interventions by existing works. From the start, this documentation was no private file but a publicly available data collection. It grew rapidly and became an independent project.
Today, mural.ch contains information on 7500 works of end of the 19th century to the present day, but with a focus on the actual muralism of the period of the 1920s to the 1950s. While the first records were primarily created on the basis of on-site visits, Alex Winiger now systematically reviews literature and directories on topics such as the American art of the New Deal or the public art of the interwar years in Switzerland. These inventory details often are deepened through sightseeing, conversations with professionals and artists, and focused source research.
One difficulty often lies in locating the works so that they can be found. Some sources are missing an exact location. Today, mural.ch offers the option of using a marker in a map for exact localization, in addition to or instead of an address specification. In the background of a record, geographic data are saved. (Meanwhile, even authors of books on works of public art have begun to cite geodata.) If a work is documented with photos that contain geodata, they will be included in the record.
Since 2017, Alex Winiger writes thematic contributions to mural art. Initially, these were brief summaries of aspects such as the decontextualization of works or excerpts from publications such as the presentation of Nigaraguan School of Public and Monumental Art by David Kunzle (1995). Later, tours and walking guides were added, such as the tour of the «borghi dipinti» in the varesian mountains.
mural.ch is open to contributions by other authors. You can document works or publish contributions as well as refer to literature on the subject. A tutorial on mural.ch shows how it's done. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.