100 Metropolitan Museum Curators Talk About 100 Works of Art That Changed How They See the World

in Art, History, Museums, Video - Arts & Culture | March 22nd, 2013

Which best describes your muse­um-going expe­ri­ence? Inspi­ra­tion and spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment? Or a soul crush­ing attempt to fight your way past the hoards there for the lat­est block­buster exhib­it, with a too-heavy bag and a whin­ing, foot sore com­pan­ion in tow?

Would­n’t it be won­der­ful to lose your­self in con­tem­pla­tion of a sin­gle work? What about that giant one at the top of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art’s Grand Stair­case? For every vis­i­tor who paus­es to take it in, anoth­er thou­sand stream by with hard­ly a glance.

The above com­men­tary by cura­tor of Ital­ian paint­ings, Xavier Salomon, may well turn Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Tiepolo’s The Tri­umph of Mar­ius into one of the Met’s hottest attrac­tions. It’s often dif­fi­cult for the aver­age muse­um-goer to under­stand what the deal is in one of these dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, 19th cen­tu­ry oils. Salomon sup­plies the need­ed his­tor­i­cal context—general Gaius Mar­ius parad­ing cap­tive Numid­i­an king Jugurtha through the streets upon his tri­umphal return to Rome.

Things get even more inter­est­ing when he trans­lates the Latin inscrip­tion at the top of the can­vas: “The Roman peo­ple behold Jugurtha laden with chains.” In oth­er words, you can for­go the hero wor­ship of the title and con­cen­trate on the bad guy. This, Salomon spec­u­lates, is what the artist had in mind when swathing Jugurtha in that eye-catch­ing red cape. Jugurtha may be the los­er, but his refusal to be hum­bled before the crowd is win­some.

As is 82nd and 5th, an online series that aims to cel­e­brate 100 trans­for­ma­tive works of art from the muse­um’s col­lec­tion before year’s end. In addi­tion to Salomon’s com­pelling thoughts on The Tri­umph of Mar­ius, some plea­sures thus far include Melanie Hol­comb, Asso­ciate Cura­tor of Medieval Art and The Clois­ters, geek­ing out over illus­trat­ed man­u­script pages and fash­ion and cos­tume cura­tor Andrew Bolton recall­ing his first encounter with one of design­er Alexan­der McQueen’s most extreme gar­ments. Each video is sup­ple­ment­ed with a tab for fur­ther explo­ration. You can also find the talks col­lect­ed on YouTube.

Bril­liant­ly con­ceived and exe­cut­ed, these com­men­taries pro­vide vir­tu­al muse­um-goers with a high­ly per­son­al tour, and can only but enrich the expe­ri­ence of any­one lucky enough to vis­it in the flesh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

 

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day  has her fin­gers crossed for some com­men­tary on the Met’s hunky Stand­ing Hanu­man.

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LA County Museum (LACMA) Makes 20,000 Artistic Images Available for Free Download

in Art, Museums, Web/Tech | March 19th, 2013

Lincoln Cathedral

The Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art hous­es the largest Amer­i­can col­lec­tion of art west of Chica­go. Devel­oped as an “ency­clo­pe­dic” museum—its col­lec­tions rep­re­sent near­ly every human civ­i­liza­tion since record­ed time—LACMA’s eclec­tic hold­ings span from art of the ancient world to video instal­la­tions. Like all great pub­lic col­lec­tions, LACMA sees its mis­sion as pro­vid­ing the great­est pos­si­ble access to the widest range of art.

Two years ago LACMA made a rel­a­tive­ly small num­ber of its image hold­ings avail­able for free down­load in an online library. From that begin­ning of 2,000 images, the muse­um recent­ly expand­ed its down­load­able col­lec­tion by ten-fold, mak­ing 20,000 images of art­work avail­able for free.

This rep­re­sents about a quar­ter of all the art rep­re­sent­ed on LACMA’s site. They’ve cho­sen images of art­works the muse­um believes to be in the pub­lic domain and devel­oped a robust dig­i­tal archive with a rich­er search func­tion than most muse­ums.

LACMA’s online col­lec­tion (80,000 images alto­geth­er, includ­ing restrict­ed use and unre­strict­ed) is sort­ed by the usu­al cura­to­r­i­al terms (“Amer­i­can Art,” “Art of the Pacif­ic” and so on) but that’s just one of many fil­ter­ing options.

A search for works relat­ed to the word “ros­es” can be done as a gen­er­al search of all objects, turn­ing up, among 268 oth­er items, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Mlle Mar­celle Lender. This item hap­pens to be avail­able for free down­load. (Note the bloom in the Madamoiselle’s cleav­age to see why the image turned up in this search.)

But the col­lec­tion can be searched more nar­row­ly by object type and cura­to­r­i­al area. There’s also a cool option to search by what’s on view now right now. This choice allows users to zero in on a spe­cif­ic build­ing or floor of the museum’s eight build­ings. The col­lec­tion can also be entered accord­ing to chrono­log­i­cal era, from 10,000 BCE to the present day.

america

This is impor­tant for the pub­lic, but even more so for stu­dents and edu­ca­tors. Nine years ago East­man Kodak stopped pro­duc­ing slide pro­jec­tors. Since then the task of assem­bling qual­i­ty images for the study of art his­to­ry has become hope­less­ly daunt­ing, with teach­ers and stu­dents search­ing a myr­i­ad web­sites to cre­ate dig­i­tal “carousels” for class or study.

For what­ev­er rea­son, in an age over-abun­dant with high res­o­lu­tion images of near­ly every­thing, pic­tures of art itself are scat­tered and expen­sive.

Insti­tu­tions like Google Art Projects, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art and LACMA are among a few that offer exten­sive, free art images online.

Of course there are still copy­right issues that all insti­tu­tions must con­tend with. But it is to LACMA’s cred­it that they take their mis­sion of pub­lic access seri­ous­ly and put resources into mak­ing their won­der­ful col­lec­tion avail­able to the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Dis­cov­er Ansel Adams’ 226 Pho­tos of U.S. Nation­al Parks (and Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site, , to see more work.

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Take a Virtual Tour of the 1913 Exhibition That Introduced Avant-Garde Art to America

in Art, History, Museums | February 28th, 2013

armory show

One hun­dred years ago, Amer­i­ca had only just begun talk­ing about “avant garde” art. Before the famous “Armory Show,” no one was even using the term; after it, Unit­ed States’ art-watch­ers had many rea­sons to. It’s what they saw on dis­play at the exhi­bi­tion, mount­ed by two dozen artists entire­ly with­out pub­lic fund­ing. Prop­er­ly called The Inter­na­tion­al Exhi­bi­tion of Mod­ern Art, the show got its pop­u­lar name by start­ing out in the 69th Reg­i­ment Armory on Lex­ing­ton Avenue in New York. It then moved to Chica­go and Boston, pro­vok­ing shock, dis­missal, and some­times even appre­ci­a­tion across the East Coast and Mid­west. A lit­tle Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Cezanne, Picas­so, Matisse, and Duchamp can do that to you.

Or at least, they do that to you if you live in 1913 and have nev­er seen such bold destruc­tion and rein­ven­tion of visu­al art’s estab­lished forms. To mark the Armory Show’s cen­ten­ni­al, the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go has recre­at­ed its view­ing expe­ri­ence on the web. There you can explore the gal­leries as Chicagoans actu­al­ly saw them a cen­tu­ry ago, albeit in black-and-white. The site also pro­vides much in the way of con­text, offer­ing arti­cles on the exhi­bi­tion’s gen­e­sis, pro­gram notes, lega­cy, and more. You can learn more about the impact of the Armory Show in this recent NPR piece, which quotes Muse­um of Mod­ern Art cura­tor Leah Dick­er­man on the sub­ject: “It’s this moment in time, 100 years ago, in which the foun­da­tions of cul­tur­al prac­tice were total­ly reordered in as great a way as we have seen. And that this marks a reorder­ing of the rules of art-mak­ing — it’s as big as we’ve seen since the Renais­sance.”

via @coudal

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Rijksmuseum Puts 125,000 Dutch Masterpieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

in Art, Design, Museums, Technology | November 2nd, 2012

The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam is one of the grand Euro­pean muse­ums. Home to many of the Dutch mas­ters (Rembrandt’s Night Watch, which seems to glow from its cen­ter, and Vermeer’s Milk­maid, to name just a few), the muse­um is locat­ed on the city’s Muse­umplein, sur­round­ed by the small­er Vin­cent Van Gogh muse­um and mod­ern Stedelijk.

All those mas­ter­pieces are now avail­able for close-up view online at the Rijksmu­se­um’s dig­i­tized col­lec­tion. Users can explore the entire col­lec­tion, which is hand­i­ly sort­ed by artist, sub­ject, style and even by events in Dutch his­to­ry. The new dig­i­tal archive has all the same great learn­ing poten­tial as any oth­er online col­lec­tion. It’s search­able, as is the muse­um’s library.

But the Dutch are a whim­si­cal peo­ple, so it seems right that, in dig­i­tiz­ing its col­lec­tion, the muse­um went a step fur­ther than fur­ther. Not only can users cre­ate their own online gal­leries from select­ed works in the museum’s col­lec­tion, they can down­load Rijksmu­se­um art­work for free to dec­o­rate new prod­ucts. (Note: users will need to cre­ate a free account to get start­ed.)

By vis­it­ing the muse­um’s Rijksstu­dio, art lovers can cre­ate their own “sets” of Rijksmu­se­um works. Sets can include images of just flow­ers (think of the lus­cious ros­es and tulips in Dutch still life paint­ings of the 1600s), faces appear­ing in por­traits, or paint­ings of Ams­ter­dam itself through the ages. Just select a work of art and drop it into your own image col­lec­tion. Then use these select­ed images to cre­ate your own per­son­al­ized prod­ucts. From tat­toos to wall­pa­per to scoot­ers (yes, scoot­ers) to smart phone skins. Unusu­al yet every­day items of all shapes and sizes can now bear the image of gor­geous art. The art is free and the object could be as sim­ple as a T‑shirt.

All of this can be done with the bless­ings and sup­port of the muse­um, which pro­vides links to sites that offer var­i­ous forms of print­ing on demand.

What bet­ter way to make the col­lec­tion acces­si­ble to the pub­lic? Some might say it is sac­ri­lege to put Rembrandt’s face on the side of a van; the Rijksmu­se­um encour­ages it. None of the artists are alive any­way to claim copy­right infringe­ment, now are they?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Download 397 Free Art Catalogs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

in Art, Books, e-books, Museums | October 22nd, 2012

Ear­li­er this year, the Guggen­heim Muse­um put online 65 mod­ern art books, giv­ing you free access to books intro­duc­ing the work of Alexan­der Calder, Edvard Munch, Fran­cis Bacon, Gus­tav Klimt & Egon Schiele, and Kandin­sky. Now, just a few short months lat­er, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art has launched Met­Pub­li­ca­tions, a por­tal that will “even­tu­al­ly offer access to near­ly all books, Bul­letins, and Jour­nals” pub­lished by the Met since 1870.

Of the many resources you can explore, here’s one obvi­ous high­light: Met­Pub­li­ca­tions now makes avail­able 397 out-of-print titles, includ­ing lots of infor­ma­tive and visu­al­ly-packed art cat­a­logs from the muse­um’s past exhi­bi­tions. You can read the books online or down­load them in PDF for­mat (although I should warn you that the PDF down­loads take some time, so be patient). When you rum­mage around, you’ll come across works like these and more:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: From Ancient Greece to Roco­co (A Free Online Course)

Down­load 375 Free eBooks

 

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Kids Record Audio Tours of NY’s Museum of Modern Art (with Some Silly Results)

in Art, K-12, Museums | September 11th, 2012

In an ear­ly, abortive flir­ta­tion with art school, I learned the tech­nique of saun­ter­ing around a gallery, look­ing alter­nate­ly bored and engrossed in what­ev­er hap­pened to be on the walls, the floor, the ceil­ing, nev­er com­mit­ting to any emo­tion, espe­cial­ly one that might betray my absolute befud­dle­ment with a good bit of mod­ern art. I’m hap­py to look back on that younger self and call him a pre­ten­tious dilet­tante, and hap­pi­er now that I’m old enough not to care if some­one knows that I’m con­fused, irri­tat­ed, or gen­uine­ly bored with some exper­i­men­tal piece that defies my lim­it­ed aes­thet­ic cat­e­gories. One of the things I antic­i­pate most as the father to an already wry and curi­ous one-year-old is hear­ing her unschooled reac­tions to some art­work I once fetishized but nev­er real­ly “got,” since there can often be no bet­ter means of deflat­ing the pompous auras sur­round­ing high cul­ture than let­ting kids have an irrev­er­ent, uncen­sored go at it.

Per­haps this is why Audio Tour Hack decid­ed to har­ness the unvar­nished truths con­tained in “darn­d­est things” with their unau­tho­rized gallery tour enti­tled MOMA Unadul­ter­at­ed (short pre­view above). The “hack,” a clever update on often staid and monot­o­ne gallery audio tours, fea­tures “experts” from kinder­garten to fifth grade pass­ing judg­ment on the work of mod­ern art stars like Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Roy Licht­en­stein. Unadul­ter­at­ed by faux sophis­ti­ca­tion and oner­ous over-edu­cat­ed ref­er­en­tial­i­ty? Yes. A tad bid too cutesy? Per­haps. But even so, still a fun idea, with lots of silli­ness (and if it gets kids inter­est­ed in art, all the bet­ter). At times, the kid crit­ics even drop a bit of adult know­ing­ness into their “any­one could have done this” assess­ment of, say, Jack­son Pol­lack (whom one kid accus­es of “just want­i­ng a lot of mon­ey”). MOMA Unadul­ter­at­ed refers to a per­ma­nent exhib­it and instal­la­tion of paint­ing and sculp­ture on the New York Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s fourth floor. The tour takes in thir­ty pieces of art, each accom­pa­nied by audio com­men­tary from the kid crit­ics. Vis­it the Audio Tour Hack web­site to lis­ten to the com­men­tary online and see some delight­ful pic­tures of the “unadul­ter­at­ed” com­men­ta­tors.

Cor­rec­tion 9/18/12: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post stat­ed that MOMA Unadul­ter­at­ed was cre­at­ed by the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. It was not, nor is Audio Tour Hack affil­i­at­ed with MoMA in any way. You can find links to MoMA’s own audio tours (includ­ing tours for kids) here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

Jack­son Pol­lock: Lights, Cam­era, Paint! (1951)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Google Art Project Expands, Bringing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Museums to the Web

in Art, Google, Museums | April 3rd, 2012

Last Feb­ru­ary, Google launched Art Project, which lets users take a vir­tu­al tour of 1,000 works of art from 17 great muse­ums — from the MoMA and Met in New York City, to the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, to the Van Gogh Muse­um and Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam. Now comes news that Art Project has great­ly expand­ed its cov­er­age, giv­ing users access to 30,000 high-res­o­lu­tion art­works appear­ing in 151 muse­ums across 40 coun­tries. The vir­tu­al tour includes paint­ings but also sculp­ture, street art and pho­tographs. And you can now explore col­lec­tions (see all) from the Nation­al Gallery of Mod­ern Art in Del­hi, the Musée d’Or­say in Paris, the Muse­um of Islam­ic Art in Qatar, the Museu De Arte Mod­er­na De São Paulo in Brazil, and the Tokyo Nation­al Muse­um. This is all part of Google’s effort to bring cul­tur­al arti­facts to the broad­est pos­si­ble audi­ence. Just last week, the folks at Google­plex helped launch the Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive and, before that, a high res­o­lu­tion ver­sion of The Dead Sea Scrolls. All we can say is keep it com­ing!

via Google Blog

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A Panoramic Virtual Tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

in Art, Museums | December 15th, 2011

These days, you can take a vir­tu­al tour of paint­ings at the MoMA, Met, Uffizi Gallery, Her­mitage, Rijksmu­se­um, and Nation­al Gallery and oth­er major muse­ums, thanks to Google’s Art Project. And don’t for­get the Sis­tine Chapel and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now let’s add one more to the list — a panoram­ic vir­tu­al tour of the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. You can vis­it the whole muse­um on your own, walk­ing from room to room, check­ing out fos­sils of count­less dinosaurs, spec­i­mens of ear­ly sea life, exhibits on the ice age, and much more. Begin the gen­er­al tour here, or find a more tar­get­ed area of inter­est here.

Note: the tour requires Adobe Flash Play­er, ver­sion 9.0.28 or lat­er.

via metafil­ter

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