How to Evaluate Public Art Mapping Software

Public art groups put out requests for proposals to outline what's needed for an art piece and narrow down options in a talent pool. But the same organizations rarely run a formal software procurement to put their collection on a map. A procurement gives you a chance to compare and contrast your options, if you know which questions to ask up-front.

Start with maintainability

Most of the services you research will have a great list of features. They've got a great database, or a great software for putting your pins on a map.

Instead, ask yourself: who does this work in year three?

Your collection is not static. Works get commissioned, repainted, relocated, and occasionally retired through deaccession. Artists change how they want to be credited. A laundry list of features is great in month one of your public art map being live, but once the person who managed it moves on and nobody remembers the login, what's your next step?

Stale public art maps weren't necessarily built badly, but more often than not, they were built by someone who left the organization.

What a real requirements list looks like

In 2024, Calgary Arts Development went to market for exactly this. Their RFP is public, and is eye-opening as a record of a real buyer writing down what they actually needed. Researching what other similar entities have created, and discussing post-launch needs and wishlist items with people from their organizations can be an invaluable resource.

Calgary Arts Development asked for artwork information and images, search and filter, location and navigation services, accessibility options, self-guided tours including build-your-own functionality, social sharing, and community-contributed content with moderation tools. For their staff, they needed a content management system for updates without a developer, documentation, staff training, and two years of ongoing support with an option to extend.

Full disclosure: we answered that RFP, and the Calgary Public Art Guide is the result. Consider the requirements as a helpful template from a peer program.

Seven things you can actually buy

Not all public art archives are build the same, and not all of them behave the same on the frontend or backend. You have a lot of options available to you, and it's important to consider which suits your needs the best.

A national archive listing

What it is: a shared public database that many programs submit records to, hosted and run by somebody else, where your collection appears as one contributor among many.

Examples: The Public Art Archive, run by the nonprofit Creative West, is a free public database of roughly 30,000 artworks across many cities. Submitting is free, with paid tiers available for an embeddable map and a collections management system built on CollectionSpace (museum registrar software). As of July 2026 their published pricing is $295 a year for a standalone embeddable map, from $500 a year for their showcase and embed products, and from $1,500 for a CMS with collections under 150 works.

Choose this if: your goal is presence and discovery rather than a designed experience, or you're working with a very limited budget. At the time of writing, this is a real free tier.

Be aware that: your collection lives on their domain under their branding. A city's collection page carries the Public Art Archive logo and navigation, not your city's. There is no visitor tour or wayfinding feature.

This is not an either-or. Submitting to a national archive costs nothing and adds a path to discovery that you're not responsible for maintaining. It's entirely possible to submit to these archives alongside running your own guide.

A tour app

What it is: a tool for building narrated, point-to-point tours. Usually audio-first, marketed primarily to museums and heritage sites.

Examples: STQRY (which at the time of writing owns OnCell, PocketSights, and My Tours), Otocast, izi.TRAVEL, and Bloomberg Connects build self-guided audio tours for museums, heritage sites, and cities. Several cities run their public art tours this way today. STQRY publishes pricing at $199 a month or $2,295 a year, while Otocast quotes a setup fee plus a per-point-of-interest rate.

Choose this if: the tour is your product. If what you want is twelve narrated stops downtown and you are not trying to steward a catalog, these are built for exactly that.

Be aware that: these services are audio-guide-first generalists. There is no artwork-specific record underneath, so attribution, materials, and condition have nowhere to live. If you already pay for one of these for a heritage tour, adding public art to it may genuinely be cheaper than adding a second vendor.

A collections management system

What it is: registrar software that tracks objects through their whole lifecycle, from accession through location, loans, conservation, and valuation. A great tool for maintaining a database, but on average are more useful for cataloging than for providing a usable frontend for interested visitors.

Examples: PastPerfect, Gallery Systems TMS, Axiell, Argus, CatalogIt, and Artwork Archive are collections management tools for registrars. TMS explicitly markets a public art module.

Choose this if: you have a registrar, an indoor accessioned collection alongside the outdoor one, or documentation obligations that take precedence over public access.

Be aware that: the public-facing side of most of these services is a web portal, not a map-first experience. They're built for the person maintaining the record, not the visitors.

A GIS layer

What it is: a dataset of points published through your city's geographic information system, the same infrastructure that maps zoning, street trees, and snow routes.

Examples: Your city probably already owns ArcGIS. At the time of writing, Saskatoon, Burnaby, Victoria, Tampa, and Tempe all publish public art this way, and the marginal cost is near zero.

Choose this if: you need the data published and your GIS team is willing to take ownership of it.

Be aware that: an open data layer is analyst-facing, answering "where are the works" and not "what is this, who made it, and why should I walk four blocks to see it." GIS layers are a great source of input for a guide, but rarely an accessible destination for a visitor.

A map you build yourself

What it is: a general-purpose mapping or database tool, with the works entered by hand and the structure nailed down as you go.

Examples: Google My Maps, a WordPress plugin, or an Airtable base.

Choose this if: you have a small list of work and no budget. A free map that exists is worth more than a paid one that never breaks out of the scoping stage.

Be aware that: without dedicated attention, there's a good chance that a home-spun map will break somewhere around a hundred works. Without a strong schema in place, different fields may be typed in different ways and you may end up with multiple entries for the same art piece. This isn't to say that this option isn't for everyone, but if you have budget, it is almost always worth building something more intentionally, as opposed to using a free plugin.

A custom build

What it is: bespoke software commissioned from a developer or an agency, where you own the codebase and everything that follows from owning it.

Examples: This is a bespoke service, so the results will vary. Hire a developer or an agency and own the result.

Choose this if: you have a genuine reason to own the codebase, or a funding limit that can't be spent on a subscription.

Be aware that: while not cheap compared to some of the above examples, the build is still the cheap part. At the time of writing, STQRY cites around $100,000 for a private developer build plus thousands more for updates. Without maintenance, a guide launched 5-10 years ago will begin to show its age, and may even need to be rebuilt from scratch if left alone for too long. A one-off build starts aging on launch day, and without a plan, the maintenance lands on you.

An operated guide

What it is: a guide designed, built, and run for you as an ongoing service, on your own domain, under your own brand, with the vendor handling the migration and the upkeep.

Examples: This is what we sell and believe works best, so bear that in mind. With an operated guide, an onboarding phase is scoped to load your collection in, then future maintenance and improvements are handled under a subscription. For our own services, we don't publish a price list because the onboarding scope varies with the state and scope of your data. If a vendor's pricing model is not published on their site, ask on the first call and request a quote.

Choose this if: your answer to "who does this in year three" is "I'm not sure", or "nobody has time."

Be aware that: you are buying a service, not a license, and you should be aware of who owns your data.

Questions worth asking any vendor

• Whose domain and whose brand does the public see? Will your guide live on a subpath on a vendor's site, or your own address?
• Can we export our data today, without asking? Your catalog is not truly yours unless you can leave with your data whenever you choose.
• What happens when the person who set this up leaves? What does handoff look like if somebody leaves, and who gets trained?
• Does it meet WCAG 2.1 AA, and where does it fall short? Does your preferred vendor name their web accessibility standards? This could affect transparency guidelines or your funding requirements, so be sure of it before signing up with anyone.
• How does pricing change as the collection grows? Do you pay per record, have record limits, or is it a flat annual fee? These can amount to very different prices as your collection grows.
• Can the public contribute, and who approves it? Community engagement is a wonderful feature, but without moderation it can be a reputational risk and a security problem. Be sure that any community input for a public guide goes through a moderation step before it goes live.
• What did you ship in the last six months? Review the vendor's site. Have they launched any recent work that is applicable to your needs? Are their recent guides state of the art, or already aging? Real work speaks volumes, so do your research on your vendor.

Picture your collection three years from launch. Maybe you've published forty new works, or your current coordinator has moved onto a different position. Your funders are asking what the program delivered. In this situation, which of the vendor types above puts you in a position that you want to be in?

The pricing model and features are big factors, but when it comes to having a public art guide that works for you in the long run, the support arrangement and keeping the guide current is a real job, and somebody needs to do it.

Where we fit

Every option above is a real answer to a real situation, and several of them will probably suit your needs.

That said, nearly every option on this list hands you a tool and wishes you well. Migration, schema decisions, and year-three upkeep all land on someone at your organization who already has a full job.

By maintaining and managing the service—but not owning your dataset—at Civic Collection we do the maintenance, schema choices, and ongoing maintenance to keep your guide working great in the long run. Some of the benefits of this:

Your product grows over time. You're not launching a fixed product and then bolting plugins onto it. Adding a tour format, a new field, or a whole segment to your collection is a conversation worth having with the people who built it, and we love those sorts of conversations.

Empty or mismatched data fields get the attention they deserve. We migrate your data with intention, working with the quality your spreadsheet has, and aiming to improve the dataset over time. If there's a missing artist credit, a photo that's too small to use, or a coordinate that doesn't line up with where you expect, let us know. These are things we genuinely care about and put a lot of attention toward.

The catalog stays yours, and stays findable. Your guide houses a museum-grade schema, on your own domain, designed for your brand, exportable in full at any time. Individual works house structured data so are reachable by search engines instead of only by people who already know your guide exists.

The most important choice you make isn't about the tools you use to build the site. It's about how you set up your database and guide for success by making a choice about who steers the ship in the long-run, up front.

If your answer to the year-three question is that nobody has time, or that you hadn't considered that part of the work, we built Civic Collection to take this work off your desk. Book a demo and we'll walk through your collection together.