Talk About Ambitious!

 

 

Check out the World Digital Library, a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the UNESCO.  Arranged by theme,  time, place, language, this intriguing resource expands our access to cultural material outside the English speaking world.

The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.  Go Library of Congress!

Here is the link::http://www.wdl.org/en/topic/

Take This Quiz Like A Liberal Arts Boss!

A Centre education comes in handy at cocktail parties and at ruling over internet quizzes! A little late for April Fool's Day, but of course, I am only joking. Critical thinking skills come in handy every day and everywhere! But just because Centre helped you become a better thinker doesn't mean you can't have a little fun.

 So, try your luck at this little painting identification quiz from Slate!
/art_quiz_name_these_paintings_from_a_small_detail.html

Preaching to the Choir!

Tom Eblen, columnist for the Herald-Leader (and father of Centre alumna and art major Shannon Eblen) has written an excellent essay about the value of learning visual analysis. Click the link to read about why everyone from medical students to detectives are benefiting from learning close observation:  studying-great-art-can-help-improve-everyday-observation-skills/

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.

Slow food? How about slow art?

What if you had five minutes? And you spent it with a work of art?

Experiencing a work of art is a very different experience from seeing it projected in class or looking at it on a screen. Most museum visitors spend from a few seconds to a couple of minutes in front of an art work.  What happens when we really stop and look?  That is what the slow art movement is proposing.  Read this interesting article from The Getty Institute here.

Happy 125th Birthday to the Eiffel Tower!

The Tower was considered unsightly and embarrassing when it was first built, Parisians who objected to the structure used their best insults,  calling it a "truly tragic street lamp."  How times have changed! Most of us adore this symbol of Paris. Check out this photo essay celebrating this notable monument.  eiffel-tower

Right Side of the Law?

An interesting move by the Getty Photo Agency makes millions of its images available for free, via an embed.  This article discusses what is in it for The Getty, as well as for image consumers. Interesting to see how this issue is evolving.  Check it out at: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/why-getty-going-free-is-such-a-big-deal-explained-in-getty-images/284264/

Science Fiction meets Gaming meets Art

An interesting piece from NPR about what makes great art famous. Is it because it is the best or because of some other factor?  Read more here to find out about alternate world paths where the Mona Lisa does not become the world's most famous painting.  good-art-is-popular-because-its-good-right

Islamic Art Resource

Students of Islamic art will want to check out this revamped on-line resource! Archnet offers articles and images for Islamic art and architecture, both contemporary and historic.  Take a look here: http://archnet.org/

The Beauty of Maps

 The Hereford "Mappa Mundi" is the largest intact medieval wall map in the world.  It is rarely displayed but after a recent restoration there was a chance to see it outside its glass case.  Such a wonderful photograph which shows the grand scale of the thing.  Read the article here: 
 the-beauty-of-maps

Smoke and Mirrors: Did Vermeer Have a Secret?

There is an intriguing article in this month's Vanity Fair about  an inventor in Texas who become obsessed with Vermeer's paintings. Check out the article Vermeer's Secret Tool

Tim Jenison, a creator of hardware and software for video production,  used his ingenuity to  look at the paintings in an entirely new way.  NPR also has an interview with Penn and Gillette, the makers of the documentary "Tims Vermeer" about how Jenison went about making his own version of Vermeer's "The Music Lesson". teller-breaks-his-silence-to-talk-tims-vermeer

Juxtapositions

It looks like a wonderful exhibit opening at the Prado this month. 

The Prado began its life as a natural history museum and  Spanish artist Miguel Ángel Blanco wanted to evoke that origin by installing some of the finest objects from the National Museum of Natural Sciences alongside the gallery's more famous works. 

"It occurred to me that I could create a contemporary cabinet, an artistic intervention that also showed off the natural history in the paintings that hang in the Prado," he said.

Colonial Williamsburg joins Google Art Project

The fantastic Google Cultural Institute has just added material from Colonial Williamsburg to its collection.

Enjoy this portrait of George Washington, by Charles Willson Peale, 1780.  In the midst of our government shutdown, it might be a good moment to contemplate some of our tumultuous history and iconic heroes.  The Google projects lets you get up close and personal by clicking on any image.  You can get close enough to see Washington's button holes and look him in the eye.

And, of course, there are many, many more wonderful images from all around the world.

The National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art has just relaunched its web site and it looks beautiful.  A fine resource to research and gorgeous images to use in your scholarly projects. Take a look here: National Gallery Image Collection