Experience New York City’s Fabled Mid-Century Nightclubs in an Interactive, COVID-19-Era, Student-Designed Exhibit

in Design, Education, History, Museums, Technology, Travel | April 24th, 2020

It’s been over a month since pub­lic health pre­cau­tions led almost every school in the Unit­ed States to switch to online instruc­tion.

While there are obvi­ous­ly much greater tragedies unfold­ing dai­ly, it’s hard not to empathize with stu­dents who have watched count­less spe­cial events—proms, com­mence­ments, spring sports, per­for­mances, hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed rites of passage—go poof.

In New York City, stu­dents in Par­sons School of Design’s Nar­ra­tive Spaces: Design Tools for Spa­tial Sto­ry­telling course were crest­fall­en to learn that their upcom­ing open-to-the-pub­lic exhi­bi­tion of group and solo projects in the West Village—the cen­ter­piece of the class and a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with an audi­ence out­side of the classroom—was sud­den­ly off the menu.

Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Jeff Stark, who co-teach­es the class with Pamela Park­er, was dis­ap­point­ed on their behalves.

Stark’s own work, from Empire Dri­ve In to Miss Rock­away Arma­da, is root­ed in live expe­ri­ence, and New York City holds a spe­cial place in his heart. (He also edits the week­ly email list Non­sense NYC, an invalu­able resource for inde­pen­dent art and Do-It-Your­self events in the city.)

This year’s class projects stemmed from vis­its to the City Reli­quary, a small muse­um and civic orga­ni­za­tion cel­e­brat­ing every­day New York City arti­facts. Stu­dents were able to get up close and per­son­al with Chris Engel’s col­lec­tion of pho­tographs, menus, pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, and sou­venirs doc­u­ment­ing the hey­day of New York’s sup­per club nightlife, from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Stu­dent Rylie Cooke, an Aus­tralian who aspires to launch a design com­pa­ny, found that her research deep­ened her con­nec­tion to arti­facts she encoun­tered at the Reli­quary, as she came to appre­ci­ate the fabled Copaca­bana’s influ­ence on the pop­u­lar cul­ture, food, and music of the peri­od:

… with COVID-19 it became impor­tant to have this con­nec­tion to the arti­facts as I was­n’t able to phys­i­cal­ly touch or look at them when Par­sons moved to online for the semes­ter. I am a very hands-on cre­ative and I love curat­ing things, espe­cial­ly in an exhib­it for­mat.

Rather than scrap their goal of pub­lic exhi­bi­tion, the class decid­ed to take things into the vir­tu­al realm, hus­tling to adapt their orig­i­nal con­cepts to a pure­ly screen-based expe­ri­ence, The New York Sup­per Club: From Nightlife to Social Dis­tanc­ing.

The plan to wow vis­i­tors with a peri­od-appro­pri­ate table in the cen­ter of their West Vil­lage exhi­bi­tion space became a grid of dig­i­tal place­mats that serve as por­tals to each project.

Cooke’s con­tri­bu­tion, A Seat at the Copaca­bana, begins with an inter­view in which base­ball great Mick­ey Man­tle recounts get­ting into a cloak­room brawl as he and fel­low New York Yan­kees cel­e­brat­ed a birth­day with a Sam­my Davis Jr. set. Recipes for steak and pota­toes, Chick­en a la King, rarebit, and arroz con pol­lo pro­vide fla­vor for a floor­show rep­re­sent­ed by archival footage of “Let’s Do the Copaca­bana” star­ring Car­men Miran­da, a Mar­tin and Lewis appear­ance, and a dance rehearsal from 1945. The tour ends at the Copa’s cur­rent incar­na­tion in Times Square, with a vision of pre-social­ly dis­tanced con­tem­po­rary mer­ry­mak­ers sal­sa-ing the night away.

(Nav­i­gate this exhib­it using tool­bar arrows at the bot­tom of the screen.)

Stu­dent Hongxi Chen’s inves­ti­ga­tions into The Chi­na Doll night­club result­ed in an elab­o­rate inter­ac­tive immer­sive expe­ri­ence on the top­ic of cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion:

The Chi­na Doll… was found­ed in 1946 by Cau­casian stage pro­duc­er Tom Ball, who deemed it the only “all-ori­en­tal” night club in New York. While the club some­times played off “Ori­en­tal” stereo­types, and titled one of its shows “Slant-Eyed Scan­dals,” they fea­tured Asian dancers and Asian singers pre­sent­ing pop­u­lar songs in a way New York­ers had nev­er seen before. The Dim inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence unfolds with the sto­ry of Thomas, a wait­er at the Chi­na Doll.

As a junior in Par­sons’ Design and Tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram, Chen had plen­ty of pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence forg­ing vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments, but work­ing with a muse­um col­lec­tion was new to him, as was col­lab­o­rat­ing on a vir­tu­al plat­form.

He sought Stark’s advice on cre­at­ing vivid dia­logue for his fic­tion­al wait­er.

Jiaqi Liuan, a Design and Tech­nol­o­gy MFA stu­dent and vet­er­an of the Shang­hai pro­duc­tion of Sleep No More, Punchdrunk’s immer­sive retelling of Mac­Beth, helped chore­o­graph Chen’s Chi­na Doll dancers in an homage to The Flower Drum Song’s Fan Tan Fan­nie num­ber.

Chen stayed up until 7 am for two weeks, devour­ing open source tuto­ri­als in an attempt to wran­gle and debug the many ele­ments of his ambi­tious project—audio, video, char­ac­ter mod­els and ani­ma­tion, soft­ware, game engines, and game serv­er plat­form.

As Chen not­ed at the exhibition’s recent Zoom open­ing (an event that was fol­lowed by a dig­i­tal dance par­ty), the mas­sive game can be a bit slow to load. Don’t wor­ry, it’s worth the wait, espe­cial­ly as you will have a hand in the sto­ry, steer­ing it to one of five dif­fer­ent end­ings.

Chen, an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent, could not safe­ly return to Chi­na and has not left his stu­dent apart­ment since mid-March, but game­ly states that remain­ing in the same time zone as his school allowed him to com­mu­ni­cate effi­cient­ly with his pro­fes­sors and the major­i­ty of his class­mates. (Cooke is back home in Aus­tralia.)

Adds Chen:

Even though we are fac­ing a dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stance under the pan­dem­ic and had to piv­ot our orig­i­nal ideas into a vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tion, I’m glad that our class was able to quick­ly change plans and adapt to the sit­u­a­tion. This… actu­al­ly inspired me a lot and opened up ways to invite and con­nect peo­ple with vir­tu­al art­work.

Oth­er high­lights of The New York Sup­per Club: From Nightlife to Social Dis­tanc­ing include Ming Hong Xian’s explo­ration of the famous West Vil­lage coun­try music club, The Vil­lage Barn (com­plete with tur­tle races) and What Are You? a per­son­al­i­ty test devised by Mi Ri Kim and Eleanor Mel­by, to help vis­i­tors deter­mine which clas­sic NYC sup­per club best suits their per­son­al­i­ty.

(Appar­ent­ly, I’m head­ed to Cafe Zanz­ibar, below, where the drinks are cheap, the aspirin is free, and Cab Cal­loway is a fre­quent head­lin­er.)

Stark admits that ini­tial­ly, his stu­dents may not have shared his swoon­ing response to the source mate­r­i­al, but they share his love of New York City and the desire to “get in the thick of it.” By bring­ing a Gen­er­a­tion Z per­spec­tive to this his­tor­i­cal ephemera, they stake a claim, mak­ing work that could help the City Reli­quary con­nect to a new audi­ence.

Enter The New York Sup­per Club: From Nightlife to Social Dis­tanc­ing here.

Explore the City Reli­quary online here, and join in the civic pride by par­tic­i­pat­ing in its week­ly Insta­gram Live events, includ­ing Thurs­day Col­lec­tors’ Nights.

(All images used with per­mis­sion of the artists and The City Reli­quary)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.) 

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her con­tri­bu­tion to art in iso­la­tion is a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Museum Curators Create a Contest to See Who Has the Creepiest Object: Ancient Body Parts, Cursed Toys, and More

in History, Museums, Twitter | April 21st, 2020

Muse­ums around the world have tem­porar­i­ly closed due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and each of these insti­tu­tions has used its down­time dif­fer­ent­ly. Some have pro­vid­ed online ver­sions of the expe­ri­ences pre­vi­ous­ly offered in their phys­i­cal gal­leries; oth­ers have start­ed pro­longed bat­tles on Twit­ter. No, not the kind of pro­longed bat­tle one nor­mal­ly asso­ciates with Twit­ter, but a friend­lier, more pro­duc­tive com­pe­ti­tion between pro­fes­sion­als. At times, how­ev­er, the #cura­tor­bat­tle, as it’s been hash­tagged, has looked just as repul­sive to the view­er as any Twit­ter con­flict: espe­cial­ly last week, when the York­shire Muse­um threw down the chal­lenge to pull the “creepi­est object” out of the archives and post it.

“Muse­um cura­tors are up to their ears in weird crap, some of which isn’t fit for dis­play,” writes Ruin My Week’s Ali­son Sul­li­van. “There are lots of niche muse­ums out there, too, who don’t get the kind of atten­tion the Smith­son­ian receives. They’re about local his­to­ry or spe­cif­ic inter­ests, and their col­lec­tions are the strangest of all.”

The York­shire Muse­um, which bills itself as offer­ing “Britain’s finest archae­o­log­i­cal trea­sures, and a walk through the Juras­sic land­scapes of York­shire,” is no dif­fer­ent: they start­ed off the chal­lenge of the week by post­ing a “3rd/4th cen­tu­ry hair bun from the bur­ial of a #Roman lady, still with the jet pins in place” — albeit ful­ly detached from the head it was buried on.

Oth­er par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions saw the York­shire Muse­um’s hair bun and raised it a “sheep’s heart stuck with pins and nails, to be worn like a neck­lace for break­ing evil spells,” a P.T. Bar­num-style “mer­maid” con­struct­ed through taxi­dermy, a “CURSED CHILDREN’S TOY that we found inside the walls of a 155-year-old man­sion,” and small dio­ra­mas pop­u­lat­ed by gold-min­ers and card-play­ers made of crab’s legs and claws.

In the tweet post­ing that last, the York Cas­tle Muse­um describes the pieces’ cre­ators as typ­i­cal of Vic­to­ri­ans, who “loved weird/creepy stuff.” If your own such love isn’t sat­is­fied by the high­lights at Ruin My Week and The Guardian, have a look at the replies below the  York­shire Muse­um’s orig­i­nal tweet. You may not have asked to see a beaked 17th- or 18th-cen­tu­ry plague mask at this par­tic­u­lar moment, but try to take it in the spir­it of cul­tur­al exchange. View more creepy objects on Twit­ter here.

via Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Weird Objects” in the New York Pub­lic Library’s Col­lec­tions: Vir­ginia Woolf’s Cane, Charles Dick­ens’ Let­ter Open­er, Walt Whitman’s Hair & More

Inside the Creepy, “Aban­doned” Wiz­ard of Oz Theme Park: Scenes of Beau­ti­ful Decay

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

The Creepy 13th-Cen­tu­ry Melody That Shows Up in Movies Again & Again: An Intro­duc­tion to “Dies Irae”

Charles Dick­ens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Sec­ond Life as a Let­ter Open­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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An Art Gallery for Gerbils: Two Quarantined Londoners Create a Mini Museum Complete with Gerbil-Themed Art

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Life, Museums | April 10th, 2020

Lon­don-based cou­ple Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na’s self-iso­la­tion project calls to mind artist (and muse­um cura­tor) Bill Scan­ga’s At the Met, exhib­it­ed near­ly 20 years ago as part of the group show Almost Warm and Fuzzy: Child­hood and Con­tem­po­rary Art at P.S.1 Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (now known as MoMA PS1).

Scan­ga’s instal­la­tion involved hang­ing mini-repli­cas of works from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um’s Amer­i­can col­lec­tion on extreme­ly long wires that trav­eled from under-ceil­ing pic­ture rail to the base­board, where a col­lec­tion of art-lov­ing taxi­der­mied mice wait­ed expec­tant­ly. One rest­ed on a famil­iar-look­ing, black vinyl uphol­stered bench, a tiny blue shop­ping bag from the Met’s gift store parked near its dain­ty, shoe­less feet.

Fil­ip­po and Marianna’s art-lov­ing rodents are ger­bils, and unlike Scanga’s art­ful­ly stuffed mod­els, theirs—9‑month-old broth­ers Pan­doro and Tiramisù—are very much alive, as Tiramisù proved when he gnawed the unseen gallery assistant’s painstak­ing­ly assem­bled card­board stool to bits under the watch­ful eye of the tiny Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring fac­sim­i­le Mar­i­an­na craft­ed for his cul­tur­al enrich­ment.

A video the cou­ple pub­lished on Red­dit, above, shows the fur­ry muse­um goers scam­per­ing under the bench­es to the tune of “The Blue Danube” and plac­ing their paws on the art­work, includ­ing an expert, ger­bil-themed forgery of Gus­tav Klimt’s gold-flecked Sym­bol­ist mas­ter­piece, The Kiss.

Not to be vul­gar, but if this muse­um has a restroom, Pan­doro and Tiramisù seem to have giv­en it a miss, an impro­pri­ety sur­pass­ing any waged by the tit­u­lar char­ac­ters of Beat­rix Potter’s Tale of Two Bad Mice.

Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na accept­ed the destruc­tion of their exquis­ite­ly staged set with a cheer that sug­gests they’re not shut up for the dura­tion with a small child… just ger­bils, who can be deposit­ed back into their Habi­trail when the fun’s over.

The atten­tion to detail—the gallery tags! The lam­i­nat­ed cards in mul­ti­ple lan­guages in a wall-mount­ed holder!—captured the imag­i­na­tion of Red­dit. Users jumped Marianna’s orig­i­nal post—(Quar­an­tine, day 14. Me and my boyfriend spent the whole day set­ting up an art gallery for our ger­bil)—with sug­ges­tions of oth­er famous works to recre­ate in minia­ture and add to the col­lec­tion. Rest assured no groan-wor­thy, pun-based, ger­bil-cen­tric title was left unex­pressed.

With cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions tem­porar­i­ly shut­tered for the good of pub­lic health, many view­ers also shared their yearn­ing to get back inside favorite muse­ums. (Mar­i­an­na reports that Fil­ip­po is a muse­um work­er.)

For now, we must be patient, and live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through ger­bils ’til the long wait is over.


Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ingenious Improvised Recreations of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Using Materials Found Around the House

in Art, Creativity, Museums | April 6th, 2020

One can only tol­er­ate so many edu­ca­tion­al videos in self-iso­la­tion before the brain begins to rebel.

Hands-on learn­ing. That’s what we’re crav­ing.

And ulti­mate­ly, that’s what the Get­ty pro­vides with an addic­tive chal­lenge to cap­tive audi­ences on Twit­ter, Face­book, and Insta­gram to re-cre­ate icon­ic art­works using three house­hold objects.

Par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to look at the Get­ty’s down­load­able, dig­i­tized col­lec­tion and beyond for a piece that speaks to them, pos­si­bly because of their abil­i­ty to match it by dint of hair col­or, physique or  per­fect prop.)

Cer­tain works quick­ly emerged as favorites, with Johannes Ver­meer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring (c. 1665) the clear front run­ner.

The Mau­rit­shuis, where Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring is quar­an­tined, along with oth­er Hague-dwellers such as Rem­brandt’s The Anato­my Les­son of Dr Nico­laes Tulp and Fab­ri­tius’ The Goldfinch, describes it thus­ly:

Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring is Vermeer’s most famous paint­ing. It is not a por­trait, but a ‘tron­ie’ – a paint­ing of an imag­i­nary fig­ure. Tron­ies depict a cer­tain type or char­ac­ter; in this case a girl in exot­ic dress, wear­ing an ori­en­tal tur­ban and an improb­a­bly large pearl in her ear.

Johannes Ver­meer was the mas­ter of light. This is shown here in the soft­ness of the girl’s face and the glim­mers of light on her moist lips. And of course, the shin­ing pearl.

Let’s have a look, shall we?

 

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Ver­meer’s extra­or­di­nary appli­ca­tion of light and shad­ow is a tall order for most ama­teurs, but it’s won­der­ful to see how much care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion has been giv­en to the orig­i­nal sub­jec­t’s expres­sion, the cant of her head, the arrange­ment of her gar­ments.

It seems the best way to study a work of art is to become that work of art… espe­cial­ly when one is trapped at home, seek­ing dis­trac­tion, and forced to impro­vise with avail­able objects.

Let us pray we’ll be set loose long before Hal­loween, but also that the chal­lenge tak­ers won’t for­get how inge­nious, eas­i­ly sourced, and cost-effec­tive their cos­tumes were: a pil­low­case, a but­ton, an invert­ed par­ty dress, the hem of a sib­ling’s blue t‑shirt, res­cued from the rag bag still smelling faint­ly of vine­gar from pre-coro­n­avirus house­hold clean­ing.

That off-the-rack “sexy cat” won’t stand a chance.

 

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No one’s dis­qual­i­fied if the num­ber of items used in ser­vice of these recre­ations exceeds the orig­i­nal­ly stiu­plat­ed 3. As long as the par­tic­i­pants are hav­ing (edu­ca­tion­al!) fun, this is one of those chal­lenges where every­body wins… espe­cial­ly the baby, the dog, the guy with the mus­tache and the lady with the turkey on her head, even though the baby and the guy with the mus­tache for­got their ear­rings.

 

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Some tips for par­tic­i­pants accom­pa­ny a hand­ful of mem­o­rable entries on the Get­ty’s behind-the-scenes blog, The Iris. We’ve got links to a num­ber of world class muse­ums’ and libraries’ dig­i­tal col­lec­tions here  and can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Mean­while, enjoy even more recre­ations by search­ing for #get­ty­chal­lenge or hav­ing a look at the Insta­gram of Tussen Kun­st & Quar­an­taine, whose attempt to con­jure Girl With A Pearl Ear­ring using a place­mat, a tow­el and a gar­lic bulb, launched the project that prompt­ed the Get­ty and the Rijksmu­se­um to fol­low suit.

Extra points if you accept the #neck­ruf­fchal­lenge inspired by our his­to­ry-lov­ing artist friend, Tyler Gun­ther’s take on the #get­ty­chal­lenge, below.

 

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

See the Com­plete Works of Ver­meer in Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty: Google Makes Them Avail­able on Your Smart­phone

Flash­mob Recre­ates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shop­ping Mall

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A 5‑Hour, One-Take Cinematic Tour of Russia’s Hermitage Museum, Shot Entirely on an iPhone

in Museums, Technology | March 17th, 2020

In 2002, Russ­ian film­mak­er Alexan­der Sokurov made cin­e­ma his­to­ry with Russ­ian Ark, which dra­ma­tizes a wide swath of his home­land’s his­to­ry in a sin­gle, unbro­ken 96-minute shot. What’s more, he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors shot it all in a sin­gle loca­tion, one both rich with his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance and not exact­ly wide-open to movie shoots: St Peters­burg’s State Her­mitage Muse­um, whose com­plex includes the for­mer Win­ter Palace, offi­cial res­i­dence of Rus­si­a’s emper­ors from 1732 to until the 1917 rev­o­lu­tion. What view­er could for­get Russ­ian Ark’s breath­tak­ing final scene, which opens as the cam­era floats into the midst of a grand ball set in 1913 — tak­ing place in the very hall it would have in 1913?

Now, at least in terms of dura­tion, Apple has gone to the Her­mitage and done Sokurov one bet­ter: its new adver­tise­ment for the iPhone 11 Pro is a five-hour jour­ney through the entire muse­um, shot by film­mak­er Axinya Gog in one con­tin­u­ous take — all, of course, on the phone itself. Like Russ­ian Ark, it con­sti­tutes a cin­e­mat­ic achieve­ment not pos­si­ble before recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances. Sokurov demon­strat­ed the new pos­si­bil­i­ties of dig­i­tal video cam­era that could cap­ture film-like images; Gog demon­strates the new pos­si­bil­i­ties of a cam­era-phone with not only the bat­tery life to shoot five straight hours of video, but at a res­o­lu­tion that looks at least as good as the cut­ting-edge dig­i­tal video of 2002.

Just above appears the trail­er for the ad, which hints that what the full pro­duc­tion might lack in sto­ry­telling ambi­tions com­pared to a film like Russ­ian Ark, it makes up for in not just dura­tion but oth­er human ele­ments. Gog’s cam­era — or rather, iPhone — cap­tures a Her­mitage Muse­um with­out the usu­al crowds, strik­ing enough in itself, but also with the addi­tion of skilled dancers and musi­cians (even beyond those who record­ed the video’s score). This in addi­tion to no few­er than 588 works of art spread across 43 gal­leries, includ­ing paint­ings by Rem­brandt, Raphael, Car­avag­gio, and Rubens. The deep­er you go, the more you’ll real­ize that, even if you’ve spent seri­ous time in the Her­mitage your­self, you’ve nev­er had this kind of aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence there before. It may sound exces­sive to say “watch to the end,” but if any five-hour video has ever mer­it­ed that insis­tence, here it is.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Romanovs’ Last Spec­tac­u­lar Ball Brought to Life in Col­or Pho­tographs (1903)

Russ­ian His­to­ry & Lit­er­a­ture Come to Life in Won­der­ful­ly Col­orized Por­traits: See Pho­tos of Tol­stoy, Chekhov, the Romanovs & More

The British Muse­um Is Now Open To Every­one: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour and See 4,737 Arti­facts, Includ­ing the Roset­ta Stone

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um & Its Arti­facts: Google Dig­i­tized the Museum’s Col­lec­tion Before the Fate­ful Fire

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Chinese Museums, Closed by the Coronavirus, Put Their Exhibitions Online

in Museums | March 2nd, 2020

Pho­to by Tom Winck­els, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you hap­pened to have a trip to Chi­na sched­uled for this time of year, chances are you don’t any­more. Trav­el to and from that coun­try has been severe­ly cur­tailed since the Chi­nese city of Wuhan saw a large-scale out­break of the nov­el coro­n­avirus, about which you can get up to speed through the selec­tion of free online cours­es we fea­tured last week. On an inter­ac­tive web site from Johns Hop­kins you can also keep an eye on the virus’ spread, the range and speed of which reminds us of where the expres­sion “going viral” comes from. But a real, bio­log­i­cal virus at least can’t be trans­mit­ted in the dig­i­tal realm, and so into the dig­i­tal realm some of Chi­na’s attrac­tions have begun to migrate.

“Muse­ums around the coun­try have been forced to tem­porar­i­ly close their doors due to the Wuhan coro­n­avirus out­break,” writes CNN.com’s Mag­gie Hiu­fu Wong. “In response, Chi­na’s Nation­al Cul­tur­al Her­itage Admin­is­tra­tion (NCHA) has asked them to stay active on social media and offer their ser­vices dig­i­tal­ly.”

And so “many muse­ums have opened the doors of their gal­leries vir­tu­al­ly, includ­ing Bei­jing’s world-famous Palace Muse­um, which sits inside the For­bid­den City.” Though the devel­op­ing online muse­um por­tal at the Nation­al Cul­tur­al Her­itage Admin­is­tra­tion’s web site isn’t avail­able out­side main­land Chi­na, “100 online exhi­bi­tions and gal­leries are linked to from the NCHA web­site — here and here (both in Chi­nese),” acces­si­ble every­where and some­times includ­ing infor­ma­tion in Eng­lish.

The vari­ety of online exhi­bi­tions high­light­ed by Wong includes one at the Palace Muse­um on “how Spring Fes­ti­val was cel­e­brat­ed in the For­bid­den City in ancient Chi­na”; Bei­jing’s Nation­al Muse­um’s “The Jour­ney Back Home: An Exhi­bi­tion of Chi­nese Arti­facts Repa­tri­at­ed from Italy” (a coun­try with coro­n­avirus chal­lenges of its own); Nan­jing Mas­sacre Memo­r­i­al Hall, which “lets online vis­i­tors access the muse­um from the entrance as if they were real­ly there”; and the ter­ra­cot­ta war­riors at the Mau­soleum of Emper­or Qin­shi­huang’s Mau­soleum, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. These “new online resources also offer cul­ture seek­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence muse­ums in less-vis­it­ed cities, includ­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly rich Wuhan”: Wong names the for­mer Site of the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and the Muse­um of Wuchang Upris­ing of 1911 Rev­o­lu­tion.

The NCHA’s urg­ing of cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions to shore up their pres­ences on the inter­net isn’t the only such mea­sure being tak­en in Chi­na. As the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review report­ed last month, “Chi­na has launched a nation­al cloud learn­ing plat­form and start­ed broad­cast­ing pri­ma­ry school class­es to ensure the country’s 180 mil­lion stu­dents can still keep learn­ing even though schools are closed.” The tem­po­rary shut­down of schools, muse­ums, libraries, and oth­er such core facil­i­ties of civ­i­liza­tion in not just Chi­na but an increas­ing num­ber of places around the world offers an occa­sion to reflect on the nature of our world in the 21st cen­tu­ry. Unprece­dent­ed inter­con­nect­ed­ness across the globe has made pos­si­ble unprece­dent­ed cul­tur­al, intel­lec­tu­al, and tech­no­log­i­cal exchange across the globe — but of course, there are always some things we’d rather did­n’t spread world­wide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

Free: Down­load 70,000+ High-Res­o­lu­tion Images of Chi­nese Art from Taipei’s Nation­al Palace Muse­um

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Brazil’s Nation­al Muse­um & Its Arti­facts: Google Dig­i­tized the Museum’s Col­lec­tion Before the Fate­ful Fire

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Smithsonian Puts 2.8 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain

in Art, Education, History, How to Learn for Free, Libraries, Museums, Photography | February 27th, 2020

No mat­ter how many pub­lic insti­tu­tions you vis­it in a day—schools, libraries, muse­ums, or the dread­ed DMV—you may still feel like pri­va­tized ser­vices are clos­ing in. And if you’re a fan of nation­al parks and pub­lic lands, you’re keen­ly aware they’re at risk of being eat­en up by devel­op­ers and ener­gy com­pa­nies. The com­mons are shrink­ing, a trag­ic fact that is hard­ly inevitable but, as Mat­to Milden­berg­er argues at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, the result of some very nar­row ideas.

But we can take heart that one store of com­mon wealth has major­ly expand­ed recent­ly, and will con­tin­ue to grow each year since Jan­u­ary 1, 2019—Pub­lic Domain Day—when hun­dreds of thou­sands of works from 1923 became freely avail­able, the first time that hap­pened in 21 years. This year saw the release of thou­sands more works into the pub­lic domain from 1924, and so it will con­tin­ue ad infini­tum.

And now—as if that weren’t enough to keep us busy learn­ing about, shar­ing, adapt­ing, and repur­pos­ing the past into the future—the Smith­son­ian has released 2.8 mil­lion images into the pub­lic domain, mak­ing them search­able, share­able, and down­load­able through the museum’s Open Access plat­form.

This huge release of “high res­o­lu­tion two- and three-dimen­sion­al images from across its col­lec­tions,” notes Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, “is just the begin­ning. Through­out the rest of 2020, the Smith­son­ian will be rolling out anoth­er 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Insti­tu­tion con­tin­ues to dig­i­tize its col­lec­tion of 155 mil­lion items and count­ing.”

There are those who would say that these images always belonged to the pub­lic as the hold­ings of a pub­licly-fund­ed insti­tu­tion some­times called “the nation’s attic.” It’s a fair point, but shouldn’t take away from the excite­ment of the news. “Smith­son­ian” as a con­ve­nient­ly sin­gu­lar moniker actu­al­ly names “19 muse­ums, nine research cen­ters, libraries, archives, and the Nation­al Zoo,” an enor­mous col­lec­tion of art and his­toric arti­facts.

That’s quite a lot to sift through, but if you don’t know what you’re look­ing for, the site’s high­lights will direct you to one fas­ci­nat­ing image after anoth­er, from Moham­mad Ali’s 1973 head­gear to the his­toric Eliz­a­bethan por­trait of Poc­a­hon­tas, to the col­lec­tion box of the Rhode Island Anti-Slav­ery Soci­ety owned by William Lloyd Garrison’s fam­i­ly, to Walt Whit­man in 1891, as pho­tographed by the painter Thomas Eakins, to just about any­thing else you might imag­ine.

Enter the Smithsonian’s Open Access archive here and browse and search its mil­lions of new­ly-pub­lic domain images, a mas­sive col­lec­tion that may help expand the def­i­n­i­tion of com­mon knowl­edge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pub­lic Domain Day Is Final­ly Here!: Copy­right­ed Works Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain Today for the First Time in 21 Years

The Library of Con­gress Launch­es the Nation­al Screen­ing Room, Putting Online Hun­dreds of His­toric Films

The Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um Dig­i­tizes 200,000 Objects, Giv­ing You Access to 3,000 Years of Design Inno­va­tion & His­to­ry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Free Coloring Books from World-Class Libraries & Museums: Download & Color Hundreds of Free Images

in Art, Coloring Books, Libraries, Museums | February 7th, 2020

There are many roads to well­ness. Med­i­ta­tion, yoga, exer­cise, and healthy diet are all effec­tive ther­a­pies for bring­ing down stress lev­els. But we shouldn’t dis­count an activ­i­ty we once used to while hours away as chil­dren, and that adults by the mil­lions have tak­en to in recent years. Col­or­ing takes us out of our­selves, say experts like Doc­tor of Psy­chi­a­try Scott M. Bea, “it’s very much like a med­i­ta­tive exer­cise.” It relax­es our brain by focus­ing our atten­tion and push­ing dis­tract­ing and dis­turb­ing thoughts to the mar­gins. The low stakes make the activ­i­ty easy and plea­sur­able, qual­i­ties grown-ups don’t get to ascribe to most of what they spend their time doing.

Reduc­ing anx­i­ety is all well and good, but some art and his­to­ry lovers can’t accept just any old mass-mar­ket col­or­ing book. Luck­i­ly, a con­sor­tium of over a hun­dred muse­ums and libraries has giv­en these spe­cial cus­tomers a rea­son to stick with it. Since 2016, the annu­al #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions cam­paign, led by the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine (NYAM), has made avail­able, for free, adult col­or­ing books. The range of images offers some­thing for every­one, from ear­ly mod­ern illus­tra­tions like the cat at the top, from Edward Topsell’s His­to­rie of Foure-Foot­ed Beast­es (1607)—courtesy of Trin­i­ty Hall Cam­bridge; to the poignant cov­er of The Suf­frag­ist, below, from July 1919, a month after U.S. women won the right to the vote (from the Hunt­ing­ton Library, Art Muse­um, and Botan­i­cal Gar­dens).

There are, unsur­pris­ing­ly, copi­ous illus­tra­tions of med­ical pro­ce­dures and anato­my, like that below from the Library at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona. There are vin­tage adver­tise­ments, “canoe-heavy con­tent” from a Cana­di­an muse­um, as Kather­ine Wu reports at Smith­son­ian, and war posters like that fur­ther down of Admi­ral Chester Nimitz ask­ing for “the stuff” to hit “the spot,” i.e. Tokyo –from the Pritzk­er Mil­i­tary Muse­um. “The only com­mon­al­i­ty shared by the thou­sands of prints and draw­ings avail­able on the NYAM web­site is their black-and-white appear­ance: The pages oth­er­wise span just about every taste and illus­tra­tive predilec­tion a col­or­ing con­nois­seur could con­jure.”

One Twit­ter fan point­ed out that the ini­tia­tive pro­vides “a great way to get to know some of the col­lec­tions held in libraries around the world.” Their enthu­si­asm is catch­ing. But note that few of the insti­tu­tions (see full col­lec­tion here) have uploaded a large quan­ti­ty of col­orable images. Most of the “col­or­ing books” con­sist of only a hand­ful of pages, some only one or two. Tak­en alto­geth­er, how­ev­er, the com­bined strength of one hun­dred insti­tu­tions, over four years (see pre­vi­ous years at the links below), adds up to many hun­dreds of pages of col­or­ing fun and relax­ation. If that’s your thing, start here. If you don’t know if it’s your thing, #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions is a free (minus the cost of print­er ink and paper), edu­ca­tion­al way to find out. Grab those crayons, oil pas­tels, col­ored pen­cils, etc. and calm down again the way you did when you were six years old.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The New York Pub­lic Library, Bodleian, Smith­son­ian & More

Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums: The Met, New York Pub­lic Library, Smith­son­ian & More

Down­load 150 Free Col­or­ing Books from Great Libraries, Muse­ums & Cul­tur­al Insti­tu­tions: The British Library, Smith­son­ian, Carnegie Hall & More

Down­load Free Col­or­ing Books from 113 Muse­ums

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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