The Art Institute of Chicago Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Resolution

in Art, Education, How to Learn for Free, Museums, Technology | October 25th, 2018

After the fire that total­ly destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio, many peo­ple lament­ed that the muse­um had not dig­i­tal­ly backed up its col­lec­tion and point­ed to the event as a trag­ic exam­ple of why such dig­i­ti­za­tion is so nec­es­sary. Just a cou­ple decades ago, stor­ing and dis­play­ing this much infor­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, so it may seem like a strange demand to make. And in any case, two-dimen­sion­al images stored on servers—or even 3D print­ed copies—cannot replace or sub­sti­tute for orig­i­nal, price­less arti­facts or works of art.

But muse­ums around the world that have dig­i­tized most–or all–of their col­lec­tions don’t claim to have repli­cat­ed or replaced the expe­ri­ence of an in-per­son vis­it, or to have ren­dered phys­i­cal media obso­lete.

Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions pro­vide access to mil­lions of peo­ple who can­not, or will not, ever trav­el to the major cities in which fine art resides, and they give mil­lions of schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents resources once avail­able only to a select few.

We can’t all take the day off like Fer­ris Bueller and stand in front of Georges Seurat’s Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te. But thanks to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, we can all view and down­load the 1884 pointil­list paint­ing in high res­o­lu­tion, zoom in close­ly like the trou­bled Cameron to spe­cif­ic details, share the dig­i­tal image under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, and sim­i­lar­ly inter­act with an oil sketch for the final paint­ing and sev­er­al con­té cray­on stud­ies.

And if that weren’t enough, the muse­um also includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry, notes on prove­nance, audio and video his­to­ries and descrip­tions, and edu­ca­tion­al resources like teacher man­u­als, les­son plans, and exams. This goes for many of the 44,312—with more to come—digital images online, includ­ing such famous works of art as Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 The Bed­room, Grant Wood’s 1930 Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Pablo Picasso’s 1903–4 blue peri­od paint­ing The Old Gui­tarist, Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks, Mary Cassatt’s 1893 The Child’s Bath, and so many more that it bog­gles the mind.

Browse Impres­sion­ism, Pop Art, works from the African Dias­po­ra, Cityscapes, Fash­ion, Mytho­log­i­cal Works, and oth­er gen­res and cat­e­gories. Search artists, dates, styles, media, depart­ments, places, and more.

A per­son­al vis­it to the Art Insti­tute is an awe-inspir­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, if you can get the day to go. You can vis­it the web­site, with full unre­strict­ed access, and gath­er infor­ma­tion, study, mar­vel, and casu­al­ly browse, at any time of day—every day if you like. No, it’s not the same, but as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, in some ways, it’s even bet­ter. And if, by some awful chance, any­thing should hap­pen to this art, we won’t have to rely on user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos to recon­struct the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry.

The launch of this col­lec­tion comes as part of the museum’s web­site redesign, and it is an exten­sive, and expen­sive, endeav­or. The Art Insti­tute, which charges for entry, can afford to make its col­lec­tions free online. Some oth­er muse­ums charge image fees to sup­port their online work. Ide­al­ly, as art his­to­ri­an Ben­dor Grosvenor writes at Art His­to­ry News, muse­ums should offer free and open access to both phys­i­cal and online col­lec­tions, and some insti­tu­tions, like Sweden’s National­mu­se­um, have shown that this is pos­si­ble.

And, as Grosvenor shows, the suc­cess of open access online col­lec­tions has yield­ed anoth­er ben­e­fit, for both view­ers and muse­ums alike. The more peo­ple are exposed to art online, the more like­ly they are to vis­it muse­ums in per­son. Chica­go awaits you. Until then, vir­tu­al­ly immerse your­self in the Art Institute’s many thou­sands of trea­sures here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

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

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Wikipedia Leads Effort to Create a Digital Archive of 20 Million Artifacts Lost in the Brazilian Museum Fire

in Museums | September 12th, 2018

The stag­ger­ing loss of a pos­si­ble 20 mil­lion arti­facts in the fire that con­sumed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio bog­gles the mind—dinosaur fos­sils, the old­est human remains found in the coun­try, and, as Emi­ly Drey­fuss reports at Wired, “audio record­ings and doc­u­ments of indige­nous lan­guages. Many of those lan­guages, already extinct, may now be lost for­ev­er.” For­mer Brazil­ian envi­ron­ment min­is­ter called the destruc­tion of Latin Amer­i­ca’s biggest nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­um “a lobot­o­my of the Brazil­ian mem­o­ry.”

The incal­cu­la­ble loss of cul­ture and his­to­ry seems all the more trag­ic giv­en that it might have been slowed or stopped but for gov­ern­ment cuts that left the muse­um with crum­bling infra­struc­ture and with­out a sprin­kler sys­tem or even water for the hydrants out­side (fire­fight­ers had to get water from a near­by lake). But assign­ing blame, while nec­es­sary to pre­vent future cat­a­stro­phes, will not restore the museum’s trea­sures or the many years of research its staff lost when their offices went up in flames.

Sad­ly, as Drey­fuss points out, like many muse­ums around the world, the Museu Nacional had not begun to back up its col­lec­tion dig­i­tal­ly. But it may not be entire­ly too late for that, in some small part at least. In an announce­ment last week, Wikipedia called for a post fac­to crowd­sourced back­up in the form of user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos.

“We’re ask­ing peo­ple every­where to join our glob­al com­mu­ni­ty,” wrote exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Wiki­me­dia Foun­da­tion, Kather­ine Maher, “and help the world recov­er from this col­lec­tive tragedy.” Maher describes the fire as a “dev­as­tat­ing loss of 200 years of his­to­ry,” but of course, it’s much more than that. The muse­um con­tained not only pre­his­toric arti­facts, but also Egypt­ian sar­copha­gi and mum­mies, Greek vas­es, and many oth­er ancient trea­sures. You can get a sense of the scope of its col­lec­tions at the museum’s web­site and browse the vis­i­tor-sub­mit­ted pho­tos at Wiki­me­dia.

“Thou­sands of images have already been uploaded,” reports Brazil’s O Globo. Few of them con­tain any iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion, and it will fall to schol­ars or knowl­edge­able Wikipedia edi­tors to pro­vide it. Oth­er insti­tu­tions around the world are also respond­ing. Geek­Wire notes that “Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, UNESCO and the French gov­ern­ment have offered sup­port for restor­ing the muse­um and recon­sti­tut­ing its col­lec­tion.” It may rise from the ash­es, but most of the museum’s for­mer con­tents will only exist through the pho­to­graph­ic doc­u­men­ta­tion of its many thou­sands of vis­i­tors.

If you were one of those vis­i­tors, you can sub­mit your pho­tos to Wiki­me­dia Com­mons (see the instruc­tions above, or at the tweet here). Stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­dade Fed­er­al do Esta­do do Rio de Janeiro are also “head­ing up their own crowd­sourc­ing effort,” Geek­Wire notes. “They’re even solic­it­ing self­ies from past vis­its.” Here’s hop­ing this tragedy spurs gov­ern­ments to pro­vide the need­ed fund­ing for muse­ums in the future, and push­es muse­ums that are not doing so to make dig­i­tal archiv­ing a pri­or­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

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

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

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

in Art, History, Museums | August 21st, 2018

Dur­ing Chi­na’s Ming and Qing dynas­ties, which togeth­er spanned the years 1386 to 1912, few in the Mid­dle King­dom, let alone else­where, could hope for even a glimpse of the finest Chi­nese art­works of their time. But recent­ly one muse­um has made a trove of art and arti­facts from those dynas­ties and oth­ers dig­i­tal­ly acces­si­ble to the world, and a muse­um out­side main­land Chi­na at that. “Accord­ing to pop­u­lar news web­site The Paper,” writes the BBC’s Ker­ry Allen, “Taipei’s Nation­al Palace Muse­um has placed 70,000 high-qual­i­ty elec­tron­ic images in a free-to-down­load archive so that online users can enjoy its exhi­bi­tions” — and with­out the has­sles of “glass bar­ri­er and light­ing restric­tions.”

First estab­lished as the Palace Muse­um in 1925, after the expul­sion of Chi­na’s last emper­or Puyi, the Nation­al Palace Muse­um began its col­lec­tion with valu­ables belong­ing to the for­mer Impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly. Now, writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Claire Voon, it boasts “one of the largest troves of ancient Chi­nese impe­r­i­al arti­facts, from paint­ings to rare books to all sorts of objects made of jade, bronze, ceram­ic, and more.”

The dig­i­ti­za­tion and upload­ing project, called Nation­al Palace Muse­um Open Data, offers an Eng­lish ver­sion site, “although that is cur­rent­ly a rather lim­it­ed and incom­plete resource. The Chi­nese ver­sion fea­tures two por­tals to more effi­cient­ly comb through the museum’s relics. One is specif­i­cal­ly for paint­ing and cal­lig­ra­phy works; the oth­er, for every­thing else.”

Still, the Nation­al Palace Muse­um has been improv­ing its Eng­lish por­tal, which allows search­es not just by cat­e­go­ry of object but by dynasty, a list that now reach­es far beyond the Ming and Qing, all the way back to the Shang Dynasty of 1600 BC to 1046 BC. But even as the Eng­lish ver­sion catch­es up to the Chi­nese one — as of this writ­ing, it con­tains more than 4700 items — it will sure­ly take some time before Nation­al Palace Muse­um Open Data catch­es up with the com­plete hold­ings of the Nation­al Palace Muse­um, with its per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of about 700,000 Chi­nese impe­r­i­al arti­facts and art­works span­ning eight mil­len­nia. As with Chi­nese his­to­ry itself, a for­mi­da­ble sub­ject of study if ever there was one, it has to be tak­en one piece at a time.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

The World’s Old­est Mul­ti­col­or Book, a 1633 Chi­nese Cal­lig­ra­phy & Paint­ing Man­u­al, Now Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Pre-Flight Safe­ty Demon­stra­tion Gets Per­formed as a Mod­ern Dance: A Cre­ative Video from a Tai­wanese Air­line

China’s New Lumi­nous White Library: A Strik­ing Visu­al Intro­duc­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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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New York Public Library Card Now Gives You Free Access to 33 NYC Museums

in Libraries, Museums | July 30th, 2018

If you’re one of the 8.5 mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing in New York City, take note of this: When you sign up for a library card from the New York Pub­lic Library, you can get access to 30,000 free movies (includ­ing many from the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion) and also some 300,000 Free eBooks. But that’s not all. A new ini­tia­tive lets mem­bers of the New York Pub­lic Library (plus the Brook­lyn and Queens libraries) to sign up for a Cul­ture Pass and there­by gain free entrance to 33 muse­ums across NYC. The list of par­tic­i­pat­ing muse­ums includes some big ones–the Met, Mor­gan, Whit­ney, Frick and Guggen­heim. Also the MoMA, Brook­lyn Muse­um, and Brook­lyn Botan­ic Gar­den, and more. Find a com­plete list below.

The Cul­ture Pass web­site has more infor­ma­tion about this new pro­gram. The web­site is also where you will need to actu­al­ly make reser­va­tions to vis­it the muse­ums. Accord­ing to Hyper­al­ler­gic, “Each card­hold­er is eli­gi­ble for one pass per cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion annu­al­ly and allowed to reserve two impend­ing vis­its at any giv­en time.”

New York­ers, you can sign up for library cards via these links: New York Pub­lic Library, Brook­lyn Library, and Queens Library.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Par­tic­i­pat­ing Muse­ums

  • Brook­lyn Botan­ic Gar­den
  • Brook­lyn Chil­dren’s Muse­um
  • Brook­lyn His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety
  • Brook­lyn Muse­um
  • Chil­dren’s Muse­um of Man­hat­tan
  • Chil­dren’s Muse­um of the Arts
  • Coop­er Hewitt, Smith­son­ian Design Muse­um
  • The Draw­ing Cen­ter
  • The Frick Col­lec­tion
  • His­toric Rich­mond Town
  • Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy
  • Intre­pid Sea, Air & Space Muse­um
  • Jacques Mar­chais Muse­um of Tibetan Art
  • The Jew­ish Muse­um
  • Louis Arm­strong House
  • The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art
  • The Mor­gan Library & Muse­um
  • Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, MoMA PS1
  • Muse­um of Chi­nese in Amer­i­ca
  • Muse­um of Jew­ish Her­itage — A Liv­ing Memo­r­i­al to the Holo­caust
  • Muse­um of the City of New York
  • New York Tran­sit Muse­um
  • Noguchi Muse­um
  • Queens His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety
  • Queens Muse­um
  • Rubin Muse­um of Art
  • Sculp­ture­Cen­ter
  • Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of the Amer­i­can Indi­an
  • Soci­ety of Illus­tra­tors
  • Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um
  • Sug­ar Hill Chil­dren’s Muse­um
  • Wave Hill
  • Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York­ers Can Now Stream 30,000 Free Movies, Includ­ing the Entire Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, with Their Library Cards

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets Patrons Down­load 300,000 eBooks

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How to Paint Like Kandinsky, Picasso, Warhol & More: A Video Series from the Tate

in Art, How to Learn for Free, Museums | July 20th, 2018

Learn How to Print like Warhol… in five min­utes?

That sounds like fun! My Saturday’s pret­ty open…

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, The Tate’s How To series is a bit of a mis­nomer. This is not the any­one-can-do-it approach of PBS leg­end Bob Ross and his Hap­py Lit­tle Trees…

Yes, the short video demon­stra­tions come with sup­ply lists and step-by-step instruc­tions, but with­out an exist­ing fine arts back­ground, you may feel more than a lit­tle bit daunt­ed, pin­ing for the sort of kid-friend­ly mod­i­fi­ca­tions that help sec­ond graders mim­ic famous artists with such aplomb.

Rather than rel­e­gate your fresh­ly-pur­chased screens, roll of acetate, and econ­o­my-sized con­tain­er of pho­to-emul­sion to the same clos­et where your cross coun­try skis, for­eign lan­guage cas­settes, and beer-mak­ing kit are cur­rent­ly spend­ing eter­ni­ty, we sug­gest that you not buy them at all.

Instead, appre­ci­ate the way these videos bridge “the gap between Art His­to­ry and Art Cre­ation,” in the words of one view­er.

So THAT’S how Warhol and untold thou­sands of oth­er artists, includ­ing this segment’s guide Mar­i­anne Keat­ing, make their prints! A lot of equip­ment! A lot of pre­cise steps. Maybe some day you’ll take a stab at it.

’Til then… Keat­ing picked for­mer Jamaican Prime Min­is­ter Michael Man­ley as her sub­ject. Who would you choose?

Artist Sui Kim’s seg­ment on Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky’s approach to paint­ing inspires a semi-abstract scene from her South Kore­an child­hood, using the same col­or palette as Kandinsky’s Cos­sacks.

What would you paint?

Though before blithe­ly slap­ping a sec­ond-grad­er rain­bow on your vision and assum­ing you now know how to paint like Kandin­sky (whether or not you know how to paint), check out the Tate’s descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal:

Paint­ed between 1910 and 1911, Cos­sacks is an expres­sion of Kandinsky’s belief in the pow­er of art “to awak­en this capac­i­ty for expe­ri­enc­ing the spir­i­tu­al in mate­r­i­al and in abstract phe­nom­e­na.” The dynam­ic ten­sion between abstract form and con­crete con­tent may be read as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the wider con­flict between the forces of polit­i­cal oppres­sion – Kandin­sky had been deeply moved by the strikes and upheavals in Odessa a few years ear­li­er – and the hunger for spir­i­tu­al reju­ve­na­tion con­se­quent upon the rise of soul­less moder­ni­ty. Like his con­tem­po­raries Piet Mon­dri­an and Hen­ri Matisse, Kandin­sky saw paint­ing as an exten­sion of reli­gion, capa­ble, as he wrote in his Rem­i­nis­cences (1913), of reveal­ing ‘new per­spec­tives and true truths’ in ‘moments of sud­den illu­mi­na­tion, resem­bling a flash of light­ning.’ The echo of the Ancient Greek writer Longinus’s notion of sub­lime speech, which sim­i­lar­ly strikes like a bolt of light­ning, is car­ried over into Kandinsky’s descrip­tion of the spir­i­tu­al mis­sion of the mod­ern artist. In his 1911 essay On the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, he com­pares the life of the spir­it to ‘a large, acute-angled tri­an­gle,’ at the apex of which stands the soli­tary artis­tic genius dis­pens­ing spir­i­tu­al food to the mul­ti­tudes below.

Pret­ty com­plex stuff!

Per­haps Picas­so is a more straight­for­ward propo­si­tion.

Reck­on you could rope a friend into mod­el­ing for a Cubist por­trait a la Bust of a Woman (1909)? If so, which friend, and what might you do for them in return?

Oth­er artists in the Tate’s How To series include J.M.W. Turn­er and sculp­tor Rachel Whiteread. Watch them all here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

The MoMA Teach­es You How to Paint Like Pol­lock, Rothko, de Koon­ing & Oth­er Abstract Painters

What Makes The Death of Socrates a Great Work of Art?: A Thought-Pro­vok­ing Read­ing of David’s Philo­soph­i­cal & Polit­i­cal Paint­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Visit an Online Collection of 64,259 Musical Instruments from Across the World

in History, Museums, Music | May 7th, 2018

The study of musi­cal instru­ments opens up vast his­to­ries of sound rever­ber­at­ing through the cen­turies. Should we embark on a jour­ney through halls of Europe’s musi­cal instru­ment muse­ums, for exam­ple, we should soon dis­cov­er how lim­it­ed our appre­ci­a­tion for music his­to­ry has been, how nar­rowed by the rel­a­tive hand­ful of instru­ments allowed into orches­tras, ensem­bles, and bands of all kinds. The typ­i­cal diet of clas­si­cal, roman­tic, mod­ern, jazz, pop, rock, R&B, or what­ev­er, the music most of us in the West grow up hear­ing and study­ing, has result­ed from a care­ful sort­ing process that over time chose cer­tain instru­ments over oth­ers.

Some of those his­toric instruments—the vio­lin, cel­lo, many wind and brass—remain in wide cir­cu­la­tion and pro­duce music that can still sound rel­e­vant and con­tem­po­rary. Oth­ers, like the Mel­lotron (above) or bar­rel organs (like the 1883 Cylin­der­pos­i­tiv at the top), remain wed­ded to their his­tor­i­cal peri­ods, mak­ing sounds that might as well have dates stamped on them.

You could—and many an his­to­ri­an has, no doubt—travel the world and pay a per­son­al vis­it to the muse­ums hous­ing thou­sands of musi­cal instru­ments humans have used—or at least invented—to car­ry melodies and har­monies and keep time. Such a tour might con­sti­tute a life’s work.

But if you’re on a bud­get or your grant doesn’t come through, you can still tour Europe’s musi­cal instru­ment muse­ums, and two muse­ums in Africa, from the com­fort of your home, office, or library thanks to MIMO, Musi­cal Instru­ment Muse­ums Online, a “con­sor­tium of some of Europe’s most impor­tant musi­cal instru­ment muse­ums” offer­ing “the world’s largest freely acces­si­ble data­base for infor­ma­tion on musi­cal instru­ments held in pub­lic col­lec­tions.”

The enor­mous online col­lec­tion hous­es, vir­tu­al­ly, tens of thou­sands of instru­ments from over two dozen regions around the globe. (There are 64,259 instru­ments in total.) Find an Ital­ian Basse de Vio­le (above) from 1547 or an ornate Egypt­ian darabuk­ka (below). And, of course, plen­ty of iconic—and rare—elec­tric gui­tars and bass­es.

You can search instru­ments by mak­er, coun­try, city, or con­ti­nent, time peri­od, muse­um, and type. (Wind, Per­cus­sion, Stringed, Zithers, Rat­tles, Bells, Lamel­la­phones, etc….) Researchers may encounter a few lan­guage hurdles—MIMO’s about page men­tions “search­ing in six dif­fer­ent lan­guages,” and the site actu­al­ly lists 11 lan­guage cat­e­gories in tabs at the top. But users may still need to plug pages into Google trans­late unless they read French or Ger­man or some of the oth­er lan­guages in which descrip­tions have been writ­ten. Refresh­ing­ly con­sis­tent, the pho­tographs of each instru­ment con­form to a stan­dard set by the con­sor­tium that pro­vides “detailed guide­lines on how to set up a repos­i­to­ry to enable the har­vest­ing of dig­i­tal con­tent.”

But enough about the site func­tions, what about the sounds? Well, in a phys­i­cal muse­um, you wouldn’t expect to take a three-hun­dred-year-old flute out of its case and hear it played. Just so, most of the instru­ments here can be seen and not heard, but the site does have over 400 sound files, includ­ing the enchant­i­ng record­ing of Sym­pho­nion Eroica 38a (above), as played on a mechan­i­cal clock from 1900.

As you dis­cov­er instru­ments you nev­er knew existed—such as the theramin-like Croix Sonore (Sonorus Cross), cre­at­ed by Russ­ian com­pos­er Nico­las Obukhov between 1926 and 1934—you can under­take your own research to find sam­ple record­ings online, such as “The Third and Last Tes­ta­ment,” below, Obukhov’s com­po­si­tion for 5 voic­es, organ, 2 pianos, orches­tra, and croix sonore. Obukhov’s exper­i­ments with instru­ments of his own inven­tion prompt­ed his exper­i­ments in 12-tone com­po­si­tion, in which, he declared, “I for­bid myself any rep­e­ti­tion.” Just one exam­ple among many thou­sands demon­strat­ing how instru­ment design forms the basis of a wild­ly pro­lif­er­at­ing vari­ety of musi­cal expres­sions that can start to seem end­less after a while.

via @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

Musi­cian Plays the Last Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

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

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How the Ornate Tapestries from the Age of Louis XIV Were Made (and Are Still Made Today)

in Art, History, Museums | March 16th, 2018

“Time is the warp and mat­ter the weft of the woven tex­ture of beau­ty in space, and death is the hurl­ing shut­tle.”

— Annie Dil­lard, Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek

For the unini­ti­at­ed, the warp are the plain ver­ti­cal threads of a weav­ing or tapes­try, through which the col­or­ful, hor­i­zon­tal weft threads are passed, over and under, on wood­en nee­dle-shaped bob­bins (or shut­tles).

As Beat­rice Grisol, Head Weaver at Paris’ ven­er­a­ble Man­u­fac­ture Nationale des Gob­elins remarks, in The Art of Mak­ing a Tapes­try, above, weavers must pos­sess a love of draw­ing and an abun­dance of imag­i­na­tion in order to trans­late an artist’s vision using silken or woolen threads.

21st cen­tu­ry designs are more con­tem­po­rary, and dying equip­ment more pre­cise, but Les Gob­elins’s weavers’ process remains remark­ably unchanged since the days of the Sun King, Louis XIV.

As in the 17th-cen­tu­ry, giant looms are strung with white warp threads, in readi­ness for the threads expert dyers have col­ored accord­ing to the artist’s palette.

The col­ored weft threads are stored on spools, and even­tu­al­ly por­tioned out onto the bob­bins, which dan­gle from the back­side of the tapes­try, as the weaver works her mag­ic, con­stant­ly check­ing her progress in a mir­ror reflect­ing both the pro­jec­t’s front side and a print of the orig­i­nal design.

It’s worth not­ing that the pro­nouns here are exclu­sive­ly fem­i­nine. The lav­ish tapes­tries dec­o­rat­ing Louis XIV’s court hint­ed at years of unsung labor by high­ly skilled craftswomen. Tapes­tries were the ne plus ultra of prince­ly sta­tus, a tes­ta­ment to their owner’s eru­di­tion and taste. Louis XIV amassed some 2,650 pieces.

That’s a lot of bob­bins, and a lot of hard-work­ing female weavers.

Wit­ness the trans­for­ma­tion from artist Charles Le Brun’s 1664 study for the fig­ure who would become the seat­ed youth in The Entry of Alexan­der into Baby­lon…

…to the ful­ly real­ized oil on can­vas ren­der­ing from 1690…

…to its incar­na­tion as a tapes­try in the Sun King’s court:

Speed­ing ahead to the 21st-cen­tu­ry, Les Gob­elins appears to rival Brooklyn’s Etsy flag­ship as a pleas­ant­ly appoint­ed, well lit, and high­ly respect­ed Tem­ple of Craft.

View some of the high­lights of the Get­ty Museum’s 2016 exhi­bi­tion Woven Gold: Tapes­tries of Louis XIV here.

Or grab your hed­dles and plan an in-per­son vis­it to La Man­u­fac­ture Nationale des Gob­elins here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Artis­tic Maps of Pak­istan & India Show the Embroi­dery Tech­niques of Their Dif­fer­ent Regions

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Periodic Table of David Bowie: A Visualization of the Seminal Artist’s Influence and Influences

in Museums, Music, Science | March 12th, 2018

Mick Jag­ger …

Dada poet Tris­tan Tzara …

Chair­man Mao…

What do these 20th-cen­tu­ry icons have in com­mon?

Cor­rect! They’re also all ele­ments on artist Paul Robert­son’s Peri­od­ic Table of Bowie.

The late musi­cian David Bowie was a skin-shed­ding chameleon, and a remark­ably sta­ble iso­tope. His cre­ative influ­ences were var­ied.

Robert­son’s table debuted in 2013 as part of the Vic­to­ria & Albert David Bowie is exhi­bi­tion, three years before rock­’s sem­i­nal Star­man exit­ed the plan­et. Fol­low­ing a 12-city tour, it’s tak­ing its final bow at the Brook­lyn Muse­um.

“I’m not an idiot,” the artist con­fid­ed in an inter­view. “I know that peo­ple are most­ly inter­est­ed in it because it’s David Bowie. But I think it’s still a valid art­work.”

In addi­tion to posi­tion­ing such influ­ences as col­lab­o­ra­tor John Lennon, film­mak­er Stan­ley Kubrick, and for­mer room­mate Iggy Pop as atom­ic num­bers, Robert­son’s table allows for artists who came after.

“Fly My Pret­ties Fly (Thank You. We’ll Take It From Here)” includes Lady Gaga, Pulp front­man Jarvis Cock­er, and fel­low dandy, Mor­ris­sey, while Bowie’s 90s-era cos­tumer, design­er Alexan­der McQueen and artist Jeff Koons hold down “His­to­ry Is a Choice the Future Decides Upon.”

Fit­ting­ly, author Oscar Wilde appears in the Hydro­gen slot.

Buy a print of the Peri­od­ic Table of Bowie here.

Explore David Bowie is in per­son at the Brook­lyn Muse­um through July 15.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The David Bowie Book Club Gets Launched by His Son: Read One of Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books Every Month

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on March 20 for the sec­ond install­ment of Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain at The Tank. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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