The British Museum is Full of Looted Artifacts

in History, Museums | August 21st, 2020

As crit­ics and fans wrote excit­ed­ly upon its release, Marvel’s Black Pan­ther did an excel­lent job of cre­at­ing sym­pa­thy for its vil­lain. Many found Erik Killmonger’s rad­i­cal­ism more appeal­ing than the hero’s mod­er­a­tion for some spe­cif­ic rea­sons, begin­ning with the heist at the “Muse­um of Great Britain,” a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized British Muse­um. “In one scene,” writes gal­lerist Lise Rag­bir at Hyper­al­ler­gic, “the block­buster super­hero movie touch­es on issues of prove­nance, repa­tri­a­tion, diver­si­ty, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and oth­er debates cur­rent­ly shap­ing insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices.”

As a gallery direc­tor who is also black, I was awed by Killmonger’s dec­la­ra­tion to an over­con­fi­dent cura­tor that she was mis­tak­en. When the cura­tor con­de­scend­ing­ly informed Kill­mon­ger that items in the muse­um aren’t for sale, my hands began to sweat. And I was down­right thrilled when the vil­lain blunt­ly con­front­ed her: “How do you think your ances­tors got these? You think they paid a fair price? Or did they take it like they took every­thing else?”

He does not exag­ger­ate. The scene “describes a cen­turies-old truth,” artist Deb­o­rah Roberts remarks”—“colonialists rob­bing black cul­ture to put on dis­play for Euro­pean con­sump­tion.” The issue, in oth­er words, is not only who gets to tell the sto­ries of African and oth­er non-Euro­pean peo­ple, but who gets to see and hear them, since so many non-white peo­ple have been exclud­ed from muse­ums and muse­um cul­ture.

As Casey Haugh­in wrote in the Hop­kins Exhi­bi­tion­ist, the film “pre­sent­ed [the muse­um] as an ille­gal mech­a­nism of colo­nial­ism, and along with that, a space which does not even wel­come those whose cul­ture it dis­plays.” So-called “dis­put­ed muse­um trea­sures,” the Vox video above shows, are essen­tial­ly stolen arti­facts, with claims of own­er­ship that elide, omit, or fab­ri­cate the his­to­ry of their acqui­si­tion.

Some loot­ed trea­sures have been returned, but when it comes to the major­i­ty of the Museum’s “dis­put­ed” col­lec­tions, “so far, it isn’t giv­ing them back,” Vox explains, despite calls from for­mer­ly col­o­nized nations. It’s easy to see why. If they were to hon­or his­tor­i­cal claims of own­er­ship, the British Muse­um would lose some of its most cel­e­brat­ed and sig­nif­i­cant hold­ings, like the Roset­ta Stone or the Benin Bronzes, “some of the most con­tentious items in the muse­um.”

These bronzes, from the wealthy King­dom of Benin, locat­ed in mod­ern-day Nige­ria, were “loot­ed by British sol­diers dur­ing an 1897 raid,” Sarah Cas­cone writes at Art­net. Faced with calls from Nigeria’s Nation­al Com­mis­sion for Muse­ums and Mon­u­ments to return them, the British Muse­um held meet­ings that lead to more meet­ings and a “dec­la­ra­tion” that “out­lined an intention”—all stalling tac­tics that have not pro­duced results. Learn why these arti­facts are impor­tant to Nige­ri­ans and how the 19th-cen­tu­ry “scram­ble for Africa” cre­at­ed so much of the muse­um cul­ture we know today, one still heav­i­ly mired in its colo­nial­ist roots.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

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

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

Thomas Jefferson’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson Poses for a Presidential Portrait

in Art, Current Affairs, History, Museums, Photography | July 6th, 2020

We hold these truths to be self-evi­dent: that all men are cre­at­ed equal; that they are endowed by their Cre­ator with cer­tain unalien­able rights; that among these are life, lib­er­ty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness…  —Thomas Jef­fer­son, 3rd Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca

He was a bril­liant man who preached equal­i­ty, but he didn’t prac­tice it. He owned peo­ple. And now I’m here because of it. —Shan­non LaNier, co-author of Jefferson’s Chil­dren: The Sto­ry of One Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly

Many of the Amer­i­can par­tic­i­pants in pho­tog­ra­ph­er Drew Gard­ner’s ongo­ing Descen­dants project agreed to tem­porar­i­ly alter their usu­al appear­ance to height­en the his­toric resem­blance to their famous ances­tors, adopt­ing Eliz­a­beth Cady Stanton’s lace cap and sausage curls or Fred­er­ick Dou­glass’ swept back mane.

Actor and tele­vi­sion pre­sen­ter Shan­non LaNier sub­mit­ted to an uncom­fort­able, peri­od-appro­pri­ate neck­wrap, tugged into place with the help of some dis­creet­ly placed paper­clips, but skipped the wig that would have brought him into clos­er vis­i­ble align­ment with an 1800 por­trait of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand­fa­ther, Thomas Jef­fer­son.

“I didn’t want to become Jef­fer­son,” states LaNier, whose great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grand­moth­er, Sal­ly Hem­ings, was writ­ten out of the nar­ra­tive for most of our country’s his­to­ry.

An enslaved half-sis­ter of Jefferson’s late wife, Martha, Hem­ings was around six­teen when she bore Jefferson’s first child, as per the mem­oir of her son, Madi­son, from whom LaNier is also direct­ly descend­ed.

She has been por­trayed onscreen by actors Car­men Ejo­go and Thandie New­ton (and Maya Rudolph in an icky Sat­ur­day Night Live skit.)

But there are no pho­tographs or paint­ed por­traits of her, nor any sur­viv­ing let­ters or diary entries. Just two accounts in which she is described as attrac­tive and light-skinned, and some polit­i­cal car­toons that paint an unflat­ter­ing pic­ture.

The mys­tery of her appear­ance might make for an inter­est­ing com­pos­ite por­trait should the Smith­son­ian, who com­mis­sioned Gardner’s series, seek to entice all of LaNier’s female and female-iden­ti­fy­ing cousins from the Hem­ings line to pose.

While LaNier was aware of his con­nec­tion to Jef­fer­son from ear­li­est child­hood, his peers scoffed and his moth­er had to take the mat­ter up with the prin­ci­pal after a teacher told him to sit down and stop lying. As he recalled in an inter­view:

When they didn’t believe me, it became one of those things you stop shar­ing because, you know, peo­ple would make fun of you and then they’d say, “Yeah, and I’m relat­ed to Abra­ham Lin­coln.”

His fam­i­ly pool expand­ed when Jefferson’s great-great-great-great-grand­son, jour­nal­ist Lucian King Truscott IV—whose fifth great-grand­moth­er was Martha Jef­fer­son—issued an open invi­ta­tion to Hem­ings’ descen­dants to be his guests at a 1999 fam­i­ly reunion at Mon­ti­cel­lo.

It would be anoth­er 20 years before the Thomas Jef­fer­son Foun­da­tion and Mon­ti­cel­lo tour guides stopped fram­ing Hem­ings’ inti­mate con­nec­tion to Jef­fer­son as mere tat­tle.

Now vis­i­tors can find an exhib­it ded­i­cat­ed to her life, both online and in the recent­ly reopened house-muse­um.

Truscott laud­ed the move in an essay on Salon, pub­lished the same week that a year­book pho­to of Vir­ginia Gov­er­nor Ralph Northam in black­face pos­ing next to a fig­ure in KKK robes began to cir­cu­late:

Mon­ti­cel­lo is com­mit­ting an act of equal­i­ty by telling the sto­ry of slave life there, and by exten­sion, slave life in Amer­i­ca. When my cousins in the Hem­ings fam­i­ly stand up and proud­ly say, we are descen­dants of Thomas Jef­fer­son, they are com­mit­ting an act of equal­i­ty…. The pho­to­graph you see here is a pic­ture of who we are as Amer­i­cans. One day, a pho­to­graph of two cousins, one black and one white, will not be seen as unusu­al. One day, acts of equal­i­ty will out­weigh acts of racism. Until that day, how­ev­er, Shan­non and I will keep fight­ing for what’s right. And one day, we will win.

Watch a video of Jef­fer­son descen­dant Shan­non Lanier’s ses­sion with pho­tog­ra­ph­er Drew Gard­ner here.

See more pho­tos from Gardner’s Descen­dents project here.

Read his­to­ri­an Annette Gor­don-Reed’s New York Times op-ed on the com­pli­cat­ed Hem­ings-Jef­fer­son con­nec­tion here.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Trumbull’s Famous 1818 Paint­ing Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence Vir­tu­al­ly Defaced to Show Which Found­ing Fathers Owned Slaves

Meet “Found­ing Moth­er” Mary Katharine God­dard, First Female Post­mas­ter in the U.S. and Print­er of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence

Hamil­ton Mania Inspires the Library of Con­gress to Put 12,000 Alexan­der Hamil­ton Doc­u­ments Online

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Iggy Pop, David Byrne, and More Come Together with Bedtime Stories (For Grownups)

in Art, Audio Books, Museums | May 25th, 2020

Many friends have expressed a sense of relief that their elder­ly par­ents passed before the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic hit, but I sure wish my step­fa­ther were here to wit­ness Iggy Pop cross­ing the rain­bow bridge with the heart­felt valen­tine to the late Trom­ba, the pooch with whom he shared the hap­pi­est moments of his life.

Iggy’s paean to his adopt­ed Mex­i­can street dog, who nev­er quite made the adjust­ment to the New York City canine lifestyle, would have made my stepfather’s grinchy, dog-soft heart grow three sizes, at least.

That lev­el of engage­ment would have pleased con­cep­tu­al artist Mau­r­izio Cat­te­lan, who launched Bed­time Sto­ries under the dig­i­tal aus­pices of New York City’s New Muse­um, ask­ing friends, fel­low artists, and favorite per­form­ers to con­tribute brief read­ings to foment a feel­ing of togeth­er­ness in these iso­lat­ed times.

It was left to each con­trib­u­tor whether to go with a favorite lit­er­ary pas­sage or words of their own. As Cat­te­lan told The New York Times:

It would have been quite depress­ing if all the invit­ed artists and con­trib­u­tors had cho­sen fairy tales and chil­dren sto­ries. We look to artists for their abil­i­ty to show us the unex­pect­ed so I am thank­ful to all the par­tic­i­pants for com­ing up with some gen­uine­ly weird stuff.

Thus­far, artist Ray­mond Pet­ti­bon’s smut­ty Bat­man rever­ie is as close as Bed­time Sto­ries comes to fairy­tale.

Which is to say not very close

Artist and musi­cian David Byrne (pic­tured here at age five) reads from “The Three Christs of Ypsi­lan­ti” by Mil­ton Rokeach. As part of its series of new dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, the New Muse­um presents “Bed­time Sto­ries,” a project ini­ti­at­ed by the artist Mau­r­izio Cat­te­lan. Invit­ing friends and oth­er artists and per­form­ers he admires to keep us com­pa­ny, Cat­te­lan imag­ined “Bed­time Sto­ries” as a way of stay­ing togeth­er dur­ing these days of iso­la­tion. Read more at newmuseum.org. #New­Mu­se­umBed­timeSto­ries @davidbyrneofficial

A post shared by New Muse­um (@newmuseum) on


Musi­cian David Byrne picked an excerpt from The Three Christs of Ypsi­lan­ti by social psy­chol­o­gist Mil­ton Rokeach, who detailed the inter­ac­tions between three para­noid schiz­o­phren­ics, each of whom believed him­self the Son of God.

Artist Taci­ta Dean’s cut­ting from Thomas Hardy’s poem “An August Mid­night” speaks to an expe­ri­ence famil­iar to many who’ve been iso­lat­ing solo—an acute will­ing­ness to ele­vate ran­dom bugs to the sta­tus of com­pan­ion.

Rashid John­son’s choice, Amiri Baraka’s “Pref­ace to a 20 Vol­ume Sui­cide Note,” also feels very of the moment:

Late­ly, I’ve become accus­tomed to the way

The ground opens up and envelopes me

Each time I go out to walk the dog

…

Things have come to that.

Lis­ten to the New Museum’s Bed­time Sto­ries here. A new sto­ry will be added every day through the end of June, with a line­up that includes musi­cian Michael Stipe, archi­tect Maya Lin, and artists Takashi Muraka­mi and Jeff Koons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dol­ly Par­ton Will Read Bed­time Sto­ries to You Every Week

An Ani­mat­ed Mar­garet Atwood Explains How Sto­ries Change with Tech­nol­o­gy

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Take a Virtual Tour of the Mütter Museum and Its Many Anatomically Peculiar Exhibits

in Biology, History, Museums, Science | May 11th, 2020

A few months before Philaelphia’s Müt­ter Muse­um, exer­cis­ing now famil­iar COVID-19 pre­cau­tions, closed its doors to the pub­lic, it co-spon­sored a parade to hon­or the vic­tims to the pre­vi­ous century’s Span­ish Flu pan­dem­ic, as well as “those who keep us safe today.”

The event was part of a tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion, Spit Spreads Death: The Influen­za Pan­dem­ic of 1918–19 in Philadel­phia.

Anoth­er tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion, Going Viral: Infec­tion Through the Ages, opened in Novem­ber, and now seems even stronger proof that the muse­um, whose 19th-cen­tu­ry dis­play cab­i­nets are housed in the his­toric Col­lege of Physi­cians, is as con­cerned with the future as it is with the past.

For now, all tours must be under­tak­en vir­tu­al­ly.

Above, cura­tor Anna Dhody, a phys­i­cal and foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist and Direc­tor of the Müt­ter Research Insti­tute, gives a brief intro­duc­tion to some of the best known arti­facts in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion.

The muse­um’s many antique skulls and med­ical odd­i­ties may invite com­par­isons to a ghoul­ish sideshow attrac­tion, an impres­sion Dhody cor­rects with her warm, mat­ter-of-fact deliv­ery and respect­ful acknowl­edg­ment of the humans whose sto­ries have been pre­served along with their remains:

Mary Ash­ber­ry, an achon­droplas­tic dwarf, died from com­pli­ca­tions of a Cesare­an sec­tion, as doc­tors who had yet to learn the impor­tance of ster­il­iz­ing instru­ments and wash­ing hands, attempt­ed to help her deliv­er a baby who proved too big for her pelvis. (The baby’s head was crushed as well. Its skull is dis­played next to its mother’s skele­ton.)

Madame Dimanche is rep­re­sent­ed by a wax mod­el of her face, instant­ly rec­og­niz­able due to the 10-inch cuta­neous horn that began grow­ing from her fore­head when she was in her 70s. (It was even­tu­al­ly removed in an ear­ly exam­ple of suc­cess­ful plas­tic surgery.)

Albert Ein­stein and the con­joined twins Chang and Eng Bunker are among the house­hold names grac­ing the museum’s col­lec­tion.

One of the most recent addi­tions is the skele­ton of artist and dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness advo­cate Car­ol Orzel, who edu­cat­ed the pub­lic and incom­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia med­ical stu­dents about fibrodys­pla­sia ossi­f­i­cans pro­gres­si­va (FOP), a rare dis­or­der that turned her mus­cle and con­nec­tive tis­sue to bone. She told her physi­cian, Fred­er­ick Kaplan, below, that she want­ed her skele­ton to go to the Müt­ter, to join that of fel­low FOP suf­fer­er, Har­ry East­lack… pro­vid­ed some of her prized cos­tume jew­el­ry could be dis­played along­side. It is.

Get bet­ter acquaint­ed with the Müt­ter Museum’s col­lec­tion through this playlist.

The exhib­it Spit Spreads Death is cur­rent­ly slat­ed to stay up through 2024. While wait­ing to vis­it in per­son, you can watch an ani­ma­tion of the Span­ish flu’s spread, and explore an inter­ac­tive map show­ing the demo­graph­ics of the infec­tion.

h/t Tanya Elder

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Take a Long Vir­tu­al Tour of the Lou­vre in Three High-Def­i­n­i­tion Videos

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

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Virtual Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli Museum

in Animation, Film, K-12, Museums | May 8th, 2020

Let us pray that orga­ni­za­tion expert Marie Kon­do nev­er comes with­in spit­ting dis­tance of A Boy’s Room, part of the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li muse­um’s Where a Film is Born instal­la­tion.

It’s not like­ly that every sin­gle item in the mas­sive (and no doubt well dust­ed) col­lec­tion of books, post­cards, hand tools, pic­tures, fig­urines, and oth­er assort­ed tchotchkes pic­tured above sparks joy, but the sug­ges­tion is that any one of them might prove the gate­way to a fan­tas­ti­cal tale, such as those spun by the museum’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, mas­ter ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki:

The room seems to belong to some­one who was sketch­ing at the desk just a few min­utes ago. The room is filled with books and toys. The walls are all cov­ered with illus­tra­tions and sketch­es. Hang­ing from the ceil­ing are a mod­el of an air­plane and a mod­el of a Pter­a­n­odon. It’s a place where the own­er of the room has stored his favorite things. This room pro­vides lots of inspi­ra­tion for what will go on to the blank piece of paper on the desk to become the ori­gin of an actu­al film.

The Muse­um, which announced it would delay its reopen­ing out of ongo­ing con­cerns relat­ed to social dis­tanc­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, recent­ly shared some brief video tours of the Miyaza­ki-designed space, per­haps all the more mag­i­cal for being emp­ty.

One lucky view­er, who had trekked to the Tokyo sub­urb of Mita­ka for an in-per­son vis­it, recalled the expe­ri­ence of actu­al­ly being in A Boy’s Room:

Open up the draw­ers in this room, take the books off shelves to look at them, touch things, look through trunks—you might find lit­tle secrets to be dis­cov­ered. One time I took an art book from the shelf and one of the employ­ees came over to me. I was expect­ing to get rep­ri­mand­ed, but instead she kind­ly guid­ed me over to a couch so that I could read the book. Miyaza­ki took care to design the space to be friend­ly to the explorato­ry nature of chil­dren, mak­ing sure that they could play unob­struct­ed. It’s one of the rea­sons why you aren’t allowed to take pho­tos inside—he did­n’t want par­ents inter­rupt­ing their expe­ri­ence to pose for pho­tos they could care less about.

That phi­los­o­phy is enact­ed through­out the muse­um. Kids can climb all over a life-size plush recre­ation of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s cat bus, but would-be Insta­gram­mers are S.O.L.

A peek at the Space of Won­der room reveals Thum­be­li­na-sized char­ac­ters from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice frol­ick­ing in a fres­co of fruit, flow­ers, and vines.

The archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments are a par­tic­u­lar treat, and sug­gest that there’s seri­ous bank to be made, should Miyaza­ki ever con­sid­er extend­ing the brand into a theme park-style hotel. (Some­thing tells us he won’t.)

Once hav­ing seen a pho­to essay fea­tur­ing some of the fan­cy refresh­ments oth­ers have enjoyed there, the tour of the emp­ty Straw Hat Café does under­whelm a bit. Those cute lit­tle plates are just call­ing out for a slice of straw­ber­ry short­cake…

We’re unsure if muse­um staffers will be releas­ing more videos dur­ing their down­time, though we’re hope­ful, espe­cial­ly since sev­er­al in-per­son vis­i­tors have not­ed that the museum’s toi­lets are pret­ty note­wor­thy.

That said we’d hap­pi­ly set­tle for some of the short films that screen in the museum’s Sat­urn The­ater.

You can fol­low the Museum’s YouTube chan­nel just in case.

Mean­while, here is Miyazaki’s man­i­festo detail­ing the kind of muse­um he want­ed to make, right down to the café and the gift shop:

A muse­um that is inter­est­ing and which relax­es the soul
A muse­um where much can be dis­cov­ered
A muse­um based on a clear and con­sis­tent phi­los­o­phy
A muse­um where those seek­ing enjoy­ment can enjoy, those seek­ing to pon­der can pon­der, and those seek­ing to feel can feel
A muse­um that makes you feel more enriched when you leave than when you entered!

To make such a muse­um, the build­ing must be…
Put togeth­er as if it were a film
Not arro­gant, mag­nif­i­cent, flam­boy­ant, or suf­fo­cat­ing
Qual­i­ty space where peo­ple can feel at home, espe­cial­ly when it’s not crowd­ed
A build­ing that has a warm feel and touch
A build­ing where the breeze and sun­light can freely flow through

The muse­um must be run in such a way that…
Small chil­dren are treat­ed as if they were grown-ups
Vis­i­tors with dis­abil­i­ties are accom­mo­dat­ed as much as pos­si­ble
The staff can be con­fi­dent and proud of their work
Vis­i­tors are not con­trolled with pre­de­ter­mined cours­es and fixed direc­tions
It is suf­fused with ideas and new chal­lenges so that the exhibits do not get dusty or old, and that invest­ments are made to real­ize that goal

The dis­plays will be…
Not only for the ben­e­fit of peo­ple who are already fans of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li
Not a pro­ces­sion of art­work from past Ghi­b­li films as if it were “a muse­um of the past”
A place where vis­i­tors can enjoy by just look­ing, can under­stand the artists’ spir­its, and can gain new insights into ani­ma­tion

Orig­i­nal works and pic­tures will be made to be exhib­it­ed at the muse­um
A project room and an exhib­it room will be made, show­ing move­ment and life
(Orig­i­nal short films will be pro­duced to be released in the muse­um!)
Ghi­b­li’s past films will be probed for under­stand­ing at a deep­er lev­el

The café will be…
An impor­tant place for relax­ation and enjoy­ment
A place that does­n’t under­es­ti­mate the dif­fi­cul­ties of run­ning a muse­um café
A good café with a style all its own where run­ning a café is tak­en seri­ous­ly and done right

The muse­um shop will be…
Well-pre­pared and well-pre­sent­ed for the sake of the vis­i­tors and run­ning the muse­um
Not a bar­gain shop that attach­es impor­tance only to the amount of sales
A shop that con­tin­ues to strive to be a bet­ter shop
Where orig­i­nal items made only for the muse­um are found

The muse­um’s rela­tion to the park is…
Not just about car­ing for the plants and sur­round­ing green­ery but also plan­ning for how things can improve ten years into the future
Seek­ing a way of being and run­ning the muse­um so that the sur­round­ing park will become even lush­er and bet­ter, which will in turn make the muse­um bet­ter as well!

This is what I expect the muse­um to be, and there­fore I will find a way to do it.

This is the kind of muse­um I don’t want to make!
A pre­ten­tious muse­um
An arro­gant muse­um
A muse­um that treats its con­tents as if they were more impor­tant than peo­ple
A muse­um that dis­plays unin­ter­est­ing works as if they were sig­nif­i­cant

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Free Back­grounds for Vir­tu­al Meet­ings: Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away & More

For the First Time, Stu­dio Ghibli’s Entire Cat­a­log Will Soon Be Avail­able for Dig­i­tal Pur­chase

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

3D Interactive Globes Now Online: Spin Through an Archive of Globes from the 17th and 18th Century

in Astronomy, History, Maps, Museums | May 6th, 2020

Willem Jan­szoon Blaeu Celes­tial Globe 1602

No mat­ter how accus­tomed we’ve grown over the cen­turies to flat maps of the world, they can nev­er be per­fect­ly accu­rate. Strict­ly speak­ing, no map can per­fect­ly cap­ture the ter­ri­to­ry it describes (an impos­si­bil­i­ty mem­o­rably fic­tion­al­ized by Jorge Luis Borges in “On Exac­ti­tude in Sci­ence”), but there’s a rea­son we also call the Earth “the globe”: only a globe can rep­re­sent not just the plan­et’s true shape, but the true shape of the land mass­es on which we live. This is not to say that globes have always been accu­rate. Like the his­to­ry of map­mak­ing, the his­to­ry of globe-mak­ing is one of edu­cat­ed (or une­d­u­cat­ed) guess­es, free mix­ture of fact and leg­end, and labels like “ter­ra incog­ni­ta” or “here be drag­ons.” You can see that for your­self in the British Library’s new online his­toric globe archive — and not just through flat pho­tographs and scans.

Richard Cushee Ter­res­tri­al Globe 1730

“The archive presents 3D mod­els of 11 globes — a sub­set of the library’s his­toric maps col­lec­tion — that can be rotat­ed and zoomed into for greater detail at every angle,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Sarah Rose Sharp. She points to one in par­tic­u­lar, “stun­ning 1602 celes­tial globe by Dutch car­tog­ra­ph­er Willem Jan­szoon Blaeu, first pro­duced in 1602. In addi­tion to rep­re­sent­ing the con­stel­la­tions as their fan­tas­tic and mytho­log­i­cal name­sakes, it iden­ti­fies a nova in the con­stel­la­tion of Cygnus which Blaeu had per­son­al­ly observed in 1600.”

The British Library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion boasts sev­er­al such “celes­tial globes,” which chart the sky rather than the Earth. How­ev­er few of us have ever turned a celes­tial globe by hand, we can now do it vir­tu­al­ly. If 1602 seems a bit too vin­tage, give a dig­i­tal spin to the oth­ers from 1700, 1728, and 1783.

G.Wright & W. Bardin — Ter­res­tri­al Globe

Back on land, these globes fea­ture not just “fan­tas­tic crea­tures,” Sharp writes, but “charm­ing archa­ic con­cep­tions of the oceans — the ‘Ata­lantick Ocean’ in the 1730 Richard Cushee ter­res­tri­al globe, or the ‘Ethipoic Ocean’ in the 1783 ter­res­tri­al globe by G. Wright and W. Bardin.” In Chushee, Wright and Bardin’s times, few globe-users, or indeed globe-mak­ers, would have had the chance to see much of those vast bod­ies of water for them­selves. Of course, with the cur­rent state of pan­dem­ic lock­down in so many coun­tries, few of us are tak­ing transocean­ic jour­neys even today. If you’re dream­ing about the rest of the world, spend some time with the British Library’s 3D-mod­eled globes on Sketch­fab — where you’ll also find the Roset­ta Stone and Bust of Nefer­ti­ti among oth­er arti­facts pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture — and get your hands on an idea of how human­i­ty imag­ined it in cen­turies past.

Thomas Tut­tell Celes­tial Globe C1700

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enchant­i­ng Video Shows How Globes Were Made by Hand in 1955: The End of a 500-Year Tra­di­tion

Watch the Mak­ing of the Dymax­ion Globe: A 3‑D Ren­der­ing of Buck­min­ster Fuller’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Map

Why Mak­ing Accu­rate World Maps Is Math­e­mat­i­cal­ly Impos­si­ble

The Strik­ing­ly Beau­ti­ful Maps & Charts That Fired the Imag­i­na­tion of Stu­dents in the 1880s

Down­load 91,000 His­toric Maps from the Mas­sive David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy, “the Most Ambi­tious Overview of Map Mak­ing Ever Under­tak­en,” Is Free Online

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.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Stay At Home Museum: Your Private, Guided Tours of Rubens, Bruegel & Other Flemish Masters

in Art, Museums, Travel | May 1st, 2020

Of the many world class muse­ums treat­ing a stuck-at-home pub­lic to vir­tu­al tours of their col­lec­tions, none inspire the resolve for future trav­el as the Stay At Home Muse­um, an ini­tia­tive of the Flan­ders tourism board.

Before the COVID-19 epi­dem­ic response demand­ed the tem­po­rary shut­ter­ing of all such attrac­tions, the region was enter­ing the final year of a 3‑year fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing such Flem­ish mas­ters as Jan Van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel, and Peter Paul Rubens.

Its web­site appeals to young, hip vis­i­tors by match­ing inter­ests with celebri­ty tour guides: Bac­chus (as ren­dered by Rubens) for eat­ing and drink­ing in an arty atmos­phere and Rubens’ Venus for cul­tur­al­ly respon­si­ble shop­ping and dia­mond admir­ing.

Oth­er entic­ing prospects we can’t take advan­tage of at present:

A down­load­able Bruegel walk­ing tour map

Rubens-inspired beer tourism

A Flem­ish Mas­ters itin­er­ary for chil­dren

An open air aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence based on Bruegel’s The Fight Between Car­ni­val and Lent

Our sad­ness at miss­ing these can­not be chalked up to FOMO. Right now, the whole world is miss­ing out.

So, con­sid­er the Stay At Home Muse­um a pre­view, some­thing to help us enjoy our trips to the region all the more at some point in the future, by edu­cat­ing our­selves on the painters who made Flan­ders famous.

The series is also a treat for the Zoom weary. The expert guides aren’t fac­ing their web­cams at home, but rather using their high lev­el access to lead us through the emp­ty muse­ums in which the exhibits are still installed.

No jostling…

No crowd­ing in front of the most cel­e­brat­ed pieces…

No inane lunch-relat­ed chat­ter from tourists who aren’t into art as deeply as you are…

Above, Van Eyck expert Till-Hol­ger Borchert, Direc­tor of Musea Bruges, ori­ents us to the artist and his work, most notably the Ghent altar­piece, aka Ado­ra­tion of the Mys­tic Lamb, a 12-pan­el polyp­tych that Van Eyck worked on with Hugo, the old­er broth­er who died 6 years before its com­ple­tion.

Pay close atten­tion to Adam and Eve’s body hair. Borchert cer­tain­ly does.

He also sheds a lot of inter­est­ing light on the sig­nif­i­cance of mate­ri­als, fram­ing choic­es, and com­po­si­tion.

The restored altar­piece was slat­ed to be rein­stalled in its orig­i­nal home of Ghent’s Saint Bavo’s Cathe­dral, fol­low­ing the sched­uled clos­ing of Jan van Eyck: An Opti­cal Rev­o­lu­tion—April 30, 2020.

The Roy­al Muse­um of Fine Art’s direc­tor Michel Draguet takes us on a French-speak­ing jour­ney inside Bruegel’s paint­ing, The Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Ben Van Bene­den, the direc­tor of the Rubens House, invites us into Ruben’s “art gallery room”—something no self-respect­ing wealthy poly­glot diplomat/aesthete who’s also a Baroque painter would do with­out, appar­ent­ly.

The peek at Rubens’ gar­den is nice too, espe­cial­ly for those of us with no pri­vate out­door space of our own.

Jump­ing ahead to the Bel­gian avant-garde of the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­turies, cura­tor Mieke Mels of Ostennd’s the Mu.ZEE spills the beans on why native son, James Ensor, shield­ed his 1888 mas­ter­piece Christ’s Entry into Brus­sels from the pub­lic view for 3 decades.

This episode has been trans­lat­ed into Inter­na­tion­al Sign Lan­guage for deaf and hear­ing impaired view­ers.

A fifth and alleged­ly final episode is forth­com­ing. View a playlist of all Stay At Home Muse­um episodes here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

The British Muse­um Puts 1.9 Mil­lion Works of Art Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. It’s been so long since she vis­it­ed Bel­gium, she can’t remem­ber if her indis­cre­tion in the Bruges youth hos­tel made it into her trav­el mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The British Museum Puts 1.9 Million Works of Art Online

in Museums | April 30th, 2020

Maybe it’s always too soon to make pre­dic­tions, but his­to­ri­ans of the future will like­ly view the time of COVID-19 as one of unprece­dent­ed cul­tur­al, social, and eco­nom­ic change on a vast scale. One of those changes, the open­ing of his­toric muse­um collections—photographed and uploaded in high res­o­lu­tion images, and view­able in the kind of fine detail one could nev­er get close enough to see in person—has put an advanc­ing trend into hyper­drive. The British Muse­um, for exam­ple, has just announced a “major revamp” of its dig­i­tal col­lec­tion, Vice reports, “mak­ing near­ly 1.9 mil­lion images free to use for any­one under a Cre­ative Com­mons 4.0 license.”

This addi­tion expands the museum’s online col­lec­tion to near­ly 4.5 mil­lion objects—or dig­i­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tions of objects. “[Y]ou can zoom in and pan over the Game of Ur, a 5,000-year-old board game played in Mesopotamia, or the sculp­ture Hoa Hakananai’a from East­er Island.”

The muse­um is trans­par­ent about some “out­stand­ing issues” with the online col­lec­tion—includ­ing minor prob­lems with lay­out and image order—but due to “extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances” they felt it in the pub­lic inter­est to launch soon­er than lat­er. Since access is free and unre­strict­ed, one hopes there’ll be few com­plaints.

Vir­tu­al vis­i­tors can get an incred­i­bly detailed view of British Muse­um items like the 15th cen­tu­ry sil­ver and ivory hunt­ing horn from Sier­ra Leone (top), an object you can’t see in per­son, not only because the muse­um is closed but because it isn’t on dis­play. Online exhibits give us the kind of access pre­vi­ous­ly only avail­able to cura­tors. They also take us deep­er into art and archae­o­log­i­cal his­to­ry than most in-per­son vis­its can.

An encounter with the intri­cate Sut­ton Hoo hel­met, above, recov­ered at an Anglo-Sax­on bur­ial site, is inter­est­ing enough sans con­text. At the muse­um site, how­ev­er, vis­i­tors can dive into an entire les­son on the his­to­ry and mean­ing of this and oth­er incred­i­ble arti­facts stum­bled upon by a farmer in 1939 who found a ship buried in Suf­folk that turned out to be “the most impres­sive medieval grave to be dis­cov­ered in Europe.”

The demo­c­ra­t­ic util­i­ty of vast online col­lec­tions like this one can­not be over­stat­ed. The strug­gles of edu­ca­tors and par­ents these days are very real.“If you’re cur­rent­ly home­school­ing your kids,” Life­hack­er writes, “you may be inter­est­ed in the British Museum’s free online learn­ing resources geared towards stu­dents ages three to 16+. Want to learn how Egypt­ian mum­mies were made? There’s a les­son for that. Maybe you can learn what the Romans ate and drank and enjoy a Roman-themed lunch!” (Doesn’t that sound fun, par­ent who hasn’t been to the gro­cery store!) Take a vir­tu­al walk­through of the muse­um. See the Roset­ta Stone in the Egypt­ian sculp­ture gallery and the Lewis Chess­men in the Medieval Europe gallery.

Brows­ing the col­lec­tion will turn up beau­ti­ful, intrigu­ing objects at every turn. If you’ve got a par­tic­u­lar piece in mind, the muse­um pro­vides instruc­tions here for con­duct­ing tar­get­ed search­es. While it can feel like we’re sur­round­ed by scenes of scarci­ty, it’s some small com­fort to know the new nor­mal includes expand­ed vir­tu­al access to the world’s cul­tur­al trea­sures.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

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

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast