The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

The New York Times' Tony Smith with his sculpture “The Snake Is Out” in Bryant Park in 1967.

Art conservation can be a rarefied field, but a new project being announced by the North American branch of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art is taking a decidedly populist approach.

The group, which promotes collaboration among professional conservators, artists and collectors, has started a program in which members of the public are being asked to help locate, document and photograph outdoor sculptures made by the Minimalist artist Tony Smith, who created more than 100 such pieces. While many of the sculptures are in public spaces and are well-known, there is no complete inventory of the sites or condition of outdoor works by Mr. Smith, who died in 1980. (Sept. 23 will be the 100th anniversary of his birth.)

And so the conservation group is asking Smith fans to take their cameras and notebooks to “work together and complete the project by using two of the most-visited Web sites, Wikipedia and Flickr,” to “dramatically increase awareness about these works and therefore allow for the continued advocacy for their proper care and maintenance.” Information collected on the works will be organized and listed at the Wikipedia site WikiProject Public Art.

“We live in a world where every single one of the more than 500 television episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ has a well-researched Wikipedia article devoted to it, but by comparison there is practically no information about many of the greatest artworks of the 20^thcentury,” said Richard McCoy, a member of the conservation group and a founder of WikiProject Public Art. “This project can serve as a model and demonstrate the importance of documenting contemporary art while highlighting the significance of one of America’s most renowned artists.”