Art was another victim of the WWII atrocities

The below map shows some of the masterpieces that were when confiscated by the Nazi troops during the course of the WWII (art theft phenomenon).

Originality

Many websites offer lists of famous stolen paintings or statues, however, none of them has an embedded map that displays the name of each specific artwork, where it was stolen (if available) and a popup that integrates the photo of the piece of art directly in the map. This project has required me to create a small dataset and an image archive. This page is meant to be interactive, therefore users can click on any of the map markers and reveal the underlying information.

The map: from ideation to realisation

The map was built using Leaflet , an open-source JavaScript library that is available on the internet. In order to build the map, however, some HTML and JavaScript knowledge is required, and therefore creating a map might take some time. I took Matt & Krystyna's challenge very seriously and attempted to 1) map something that no one had mapped before and 2) push my understanding and usage of the mapping software and its features. The tables incorporate some of the summary aspects and key challenges of this praxis assignment.

My Key Takeaways

Aspect My Comment
Time spent on the project Approximately 2 days, on and off
Knowledge Acquired Learnt how to use Leaflet, and JavaScript in relation to Leaflet, plus improved CSS understanding
Database search Lack of pre-exsiting available database: I had to build from scratch both a small CSV dataset and a linked archive of images
Biggest Challenge Find a way to link the popup associate with each datapoint (aka each artwork) to its relevant photo in an automated way
Customisation Creating a customised icon to pin on the map was relatively quick (I used flaticon)
Helpful Tool Papaparse

User's experience

Feature My Comment
Usability of leaflet maps Easy to use and intuitive
Account Ownership NO need for an ad-hoc account
Design The map design is pretty basic and not particularly glamouros, hence it might be difficult to keep the user engaged

WWII Stolen Masterpieces

Click me to find out the name of the stolen masterpiece and the photo (if available) Map Icon Click me to switch to OMS map view Level Icon

This is what the user should be seeing:

The result

Credits and sources

Art icons - Flaticon

Banca Dati Svizzera

Opere d'arte perdute

Lost Art

Tesori Rubati

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