Exploring ideas and engaging in conversation

Month: February 2011 (Page 4 of 5)

Google ArtProject

Google Art Project: Accessibility and Close Looking

Google Art Project, which launched on February 1, is touted as Google Street View indoors. Art Project presents gallery views from 17 major international institutions—from the Met and MoMA to the Hermitage to Tate Britain—which let visitors explore a 360-degree panorama of almost 400 different rooms throughout the museums. Google plans to include more institutions and more works of art as the project evolves.

In addition to gallery views, each participating institution selected one signature to present in remarkably high resolution. These works, presented in “gigapixel” detail, bring paintings like Chris Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” at Tate Britain to the screen with 7-billion-pixel resolution—allowing viewers to pan and zoom in closer than any museum guard would ever permit. It’s an approach that pairs well with art critic and historian James Elkin’s recently launched series on close and careful observation at the Huffington Post. Elkin’s first column focused on a Mondrian at the Art Institute of Chicago and encourages readers to look at brush strokes where colors meet and other extremely minute details. Art Project’s gigapixel images are excellent practice grounds for that level of exploration.

Some museum traditionalists, including Alastair Sook at The Telegraph, seem to suggest that Google wants to replace a museum experience with an online one. But just as photographic reproductions didn’t eliminate the lure of the authentic object, there is no reason to believe that digital reproductions will do so either. Presumably the many museums that have put their collections online in the last decade don’t believe that either.

Amit Sood, the head developer on Art Project, puts it this way in the Google Blog:

[We] got together to think about how we might use our technology to help museums make their art more accessible—not just to regular museum-goers or those fortunate to have great galleries on their doorsteps, but to a whole new set of people who might otherwise never get to see the real thing up close.

Eliza Murphy, writing for the Atlantic, validates that goal. She remembers an art history professor who often reminded his students that they couldn’t possibly understand a work of art until they saw it in person and writes, “Thank you, Google Art Project, for saving us all from pretentious museum buffs worldwide. Just because I have not yet had the privilege of visiting all of the best art-holding institutions, does not mean that I am any less of an enthusiast than those that are older and better traveled.”

Decide for yourself at googleartproject.com.

Museums in the News – The Roundup is Really, Really Sick of Winter

Welcome to our weekly museums in the news roundup!

The Egyptian National Museum and other museums in Egypt continue to be very much in the news this week as officials assess damage from looting. One of the most interesting stories developing right now is the possibility that the looting of the Egyptian National Museum was actually instigated by Egyptian secret police. Human Rights Watch is making the allegations, which are troubling to say the least. The Washington Post covers the story here, and The Raw Story has a good roundup of other allegations here.

Wright Museum sets sights on women’s fitness (Charles Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, Michigan)

Nelson embraces technology to connect with visitors (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri)

Norton Simon: The Best Museum You Haven’t Visited (The Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California)

National Museum of Hip Hop Creates Donate-A-Dollah’ Campaign (upcoming National Museum of Hip Hop, New York, New York)

“Clough Must Go”: Protesters Mass in D.C. as Smithsonian Regents Meet (National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.)

Museum deal saddles up for rough ride (museums of New Mexico)

Farrah Fawcett’s red swimsuit now a museum piece (National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.)

Getty Museum’s purchase of $44.9-million J.M.W. Turner masterpiece (Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art can now accommodate a much greater range of social functions (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

Grammy museum opens first hip hop exhibit (Grammy Museum, Los Angeles, California)

Chinese government pulls mummy from Philadelphia exhibit (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

The Reagan Presidential Museum and Library gets a $15m overhaul (Reagan Presidential Museum and Library, Simi Valley, California)

Kansas museum finds Martha Washington letter (Cloud County Historical Society Museum, Concordia, Kansas)

How to get to Sesame Street? In a new museum near D.C. (proposed National Children’s Museum, Maryland)

Marshals Museum critical to tourism (proposed US Marshals Museum, Fort Smith, Arkansas)

Museums and Community; or, The Best Superbowl Wager Ever

How’s this for engaging with the community: the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art (in Pittsburgh) have thrown their weight behind their football teams (that would be the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, respectively) in a really brilliant way.

Here’s how it works:

If the Steelers with the Superbowl, the Carnegie Museum of Art will receive Gustave Caillebotte’s “Boating on the Yerres” on a three-month loan.

If the Packers win the Superbowl, the Milwaukee Art Museum will receive Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s “Bathers with a Crab” on a three-month loan.

The museum directors are even doing some trash-talking:

Milwaukee Museum of Art director Daniel Keegan said in a statement to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that he is already preparing a space for the Renoir.“I’m confident we will be enjoying the Renoir from the Carnegie Museum of Art very soon,” the Green Bay native told the paper. “I look forward to displaying it where the public can enjoy it and be reminded of the superiority of the Green Bay Packers.”

Lynn Zelevansky, the director at Carnegie, had a retort for her Cheesehead counterpart.

“In Pittsburgh, we believe trash talk is bad form,” Zelevansky said in a statement. “We let the excellence of our football team, and our collection, speak for itself. It will be my great pleasure to see the Caillebotte from the Milwaukee Museum of Art hang in our galleries.”

How brilliant is that? Can we talk the MFA into doing this the next time the Patriots make the trip to the Superbowl?

Original article, with more links and information, is here.

(PS – GO PACKERS!)

Weekly Jobs Report

Here’s the first of our weekly job announcement listings. We’ll post all new job announcements that appeared on the blog during the week. As always, you can find all job announcements on their own page.

Admin Post: Changes to Job Announcements

The observant among you may have noticed that there haven’t been any job announcements appearing on the front page for the last week or so. After some tinkering behind the scenes, we’ve made a few changes in the way job announcements are posted. We wanted to clear space on the front page of the blog for substantive writing, as well as group all the job announcements together. Here’s the rundown:

1. All job announcements now appear on their own page: Job Announcements. This page is linked from the top of the front page of the blog.

2. Job announcements will no longer appear on the front page of the blog. Technically speaking, they will be blogged – but we’re going back in time to do so. In order to keep them out of the way, all job announcements will be backdated exactly 110 years. Hence why, when you look along the right-hand side of the blog at the Archives section, it looks like we started blogging in 1900. (We’re just that progressive.) This does mean that, due to a Unix server glitch, the posting date of all job announcements won’t look right, but they will still appear in the order in which they’re posted – newest at the top. (There may be a better way to do this, and we’re working on code in the back end, but in the meantime this is the fastest and easiest solution all around.)

3. To preserve the immediacy of job announcements, we’ll be doing a weekly jobs report each Saturday at noon in a front-page post on the blog. That way those of you who follow along via Feed My Inbox or another RSS reader will still get up-to-date job announcements delivered to you. The first of these reports will be on this Saturday, February 5.

That should be everything. Any questions? Suggestions? As always, leave a comment.

« Older posts Newer posts »

Spam prevention powered by Akismet