Visit the GoogleArt Project Again!

 

The Google Art Project isn't new, but it just keeps getting better and better!  It now contains over 45,000 images  viewable in super high resolution.  And check out the street view "indoor" option to do a virtual walk through of some galleries.  The latest flourish is the Google Art Project extension

Add it to your Chrome browser and get a new art image with every tab you open.  It is beautiful!

Virtual Reality Museum

Thieves have taken art from all over the world, robbing not just museums and collectors but all of us, stealing our opportunity to experience these masterworks. The painting above is a Rembrandt stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. The thirteen artworks stolen that day have never been recovered.

 Check out this new project, the Virtual-Reality Museum to see the art digitally restored to its proper (virtual) place.   An interesting project that brings together art, computing and international crime.  http://www.wired.com/2015/01/see-worlds-greatest-stolen-artworks-virtual-reality-museum/?mbid=social_fb

All Reproductions Are Not Equal

  

Which Madame X is the correct Madame X?

Google image search is a wonderful thing. I get why we all love it. But if you are interested in accuracy, there are some compelling reasons to become a more sophisticated searcher.Above you can see a reproduction of John Singer Sargent's "Madame X"  from 1883-84, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum's own image is on the left.

On the right you can see a photo collage called "18 Madames X"  created from the top hits of a Google image search.   Which of those hits would you have chosen? 

Notice not only the many different color casts, but in the Metropolitan reproduction, there is great subtlety in the shading of the skin and the painting is not cropped, thus the relationship between the placement of the figure to the painting as a whole is how Sargent intended it to be seen.
http://hint.fm/reproduction/18-madames-x.html
http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/12127

Freer/Sackler Galleries Lead the Way

The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian and American art are opening a marvelous new digital archive of all their holdings. Beginning January 1st, these museums will offer 40,000 digital images, most at high resolution and completely without copyright restrictions.  Read here for more information: http://www.asia.si.edu/press/2014/digitization.asp

Seeing The Great Depression Anew

The Library of Congress offers us access to the incredible photographs of the Farm Security Administration. These iconic photos (over 175,000) have been digitized and tagged and made available to us all. But wait, it gets better. Yale University has taken this data and enriched it in a new project called Photogrammar.  The photos can now be explored by photographer, where the photo was taken, and by theme. More tools are still in the works.

The Meadow of Images for Scholarship Blooms

The Metropolitan Museum joins the rising tide of museums offering high-quality images for free scholarly use. 400,000 images are available for non-commercial use directly from the Met website.  Check here for more information on this great news. 

Available images will be marked Open Access for Scholarly Content  or OASC.

Digital Art History

 

 An interesting interview in the Wall Street Journal with James Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, discussing the future of art history and how technology can create new methods of art historical analysis.  Look here  to read more about bringing computing power and art history together in enlightening new ways.