Creating Media Group Folders in Luna

Folders can be used to organize multiple media groups created in Luna. Folders can contain single media groups, or can house multiple sub-folders.

  1. To begin creating the main folder, select the gray “Create Folder” button in the top middle section.

2. Name your folder, making sure that none of the “Parent Folders” are selected. Hit submit.

3. The folder now lives under “My Media Groups”. By hovering the cursor over the name and selecting one of the icons to the right, you can create a new sub-folder, edit the main folder, delete the folder, or create a media group.

4. To create a media group within the main folder, select the icon with three squares.

This brings up a window to name the media group and select the folder it lives in. Click save. This group functions like any other Luna media group, storing a selected set of images.

5. To create a sub-folder, select the icon of the folder with a + sign.

6. This opens a window to name the sub-folder and select the Parent Folder it lives under. Be sure that a Parent Folder is highlighted. Click submit.

7. Expanding the parent folder will reveal any sub-folders and media groups it houses (i.e. parent folder “Paper #1” houses sub-folder “Subtopic Folder #1” and the media group “Main Image”). Subfolders can be used like main folders: hovering over the name will reveal the icons that allow you to create a media group or another folder within it.

As you are working with multiple folders, be sure that images are added to the correct media group through the “Active Media Group” tab at the bottom. You can toggle between which media group you want to save the image to via the blue drop down menu. 

MoMA Releases Digital Archive of More Than 30,000 Exhibition Images

First MoMA Exhibition: Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat, van Gogh, 1929

The Museum of Modern Art has released an extensive digital archive that chronicles its exhibitions from when the museum opened its doors in 1929 to today.  The archive features more than thirty-five hundred exhibitions and more than thirty-three thousand installation photographs, as well as primary documents such as press releases, checklists, catalogues, and artist lists.   MoMA said, “By making these unique resources available at no charge, the exhibition history digital archive directly aligns with the museum’s mission of encouraging an ever-deeper understanding of modern and contemporary art and fostering scholarship.” Explore the digital archive on MoMA’s website!

 

Art Institute of Chicago Announces New Alfred Stieglitz Collection Website

The Department of Photography announced this week a new website focused on the museum’s Alfred Stieglitz photography collection. The interactive collection features high-quality reproductions of all 244 photographs in the collection gifted by his widow, Goergia O’Keefe in 1949. The majority of prints are by Stieglitz himself, but also by Ansel Adam, Julia Margaret Cameran, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, and many others in his circle. Furthermore, the site highlights new conservation analysis, 900 images, scholarly essays, and downloadable files. Explore the site at media.artic.edu/stieglitz

The Georg Stahl Mural Collection Now Publically Available in Luna

In the early 1970s, art historian Georg Stahl extensively researched and documented the Chicago Mural Movement. This material was used to teach a Mural Painting course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with the late UChicago Professor Emeritus, Harold Hayden. In late 2014, Stahl graciously reached out to the Visual Resources Center and offered his material to help build our digital collections of Chicago Black Art. Over 600 slides, maps, and charts were digitized and now make up the Georg Stahl Mural Collection. Please visit http://stahl-collection.lib.uchicago.edu to browse the collection!

Public Art at the University of Chicago

The University of Chicago has recently released a new web resource called Public Art on Campus which seeks to catalog, document, and provide contextual and critical information about the works of art on campus. There is an accompanying video which provides an overview of the works on campus. The website allows users to browse works by location, artist, and title and for selected works users can read an artist bibliography and an essay about the work. These selected works also include archival images and documents relevant to the work.

The VRC supports this project by maintaining the UChicago Public Art Collection and Archive in collaboration with the Smart Museum of Art, UChicago Arts, and Christine Mehring of the Department of Art History. This dedicated, password-protected collection is accessible to all on-campus users and off-campus users who have a CNetID and password. If you’d like to explore more, the Luna collection contains archival photographs, audio, video, conservation information, and other ephemeral documentation pertaining to the public works on campus.

The Illustrated Life of Ippen and the Visibility of Karma in Medieval Japan

The Archives of Asian Art has just published an article by Assistant Professor Chelsea Foxwell!  Titled “The Illustrated Life of Ippen and the Visibility of Karma in Medieval Japan,” Foxwell examines the scenes of the Illustrated Life of Ippen, 1299 by En’i and suggests that rather than “a biographical narrative, it can also be seen as an ink landscape journey in handscroll form.”  This journey is beautifully described throughout the article and is accompanied by over 25 color details. Scroll 7 of the Illustrated Life of Ippen is publicly available on the Digital Scrolling Paintings Project website, which features annotations and a live scrolling feature. Visit both sites linked above to learn more!

Image: En’i, Ippen hijiri-e (Ippen shōnin eden), 1299, scroll 7, scene 3. Nenbutsu dancing at the Kūya hall, Ichitani, near Kyoto. Ink and color on silk (handscroll), h: 38.2 cm. Tokyo National Museum.

Cambridge Publishes Rare Chinese Manuscripts

 

Cambridge University recently announced that they have digitized objects from the Library’s Chinese collections and made them freely available on-line. Digitized items include a collection of oracle bones that display some of the earliest examples for writing anywhere in the world, as well as the manuscript “Manual of Calligraphy and Painting.” This manuscript is incredibly rare and the binding so fragile that many of the prints have never been seen until now. The library has also digitized early printed books and a 14th-century banknote!

The digital images are accompanied by short description of the work and includes metadata in English and Chinese. They can be downloaded under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonComercial license. Reproduction rights can also be requested through the site.

Smart Museum of Art Images in Luna

The Visual Resources Center is very pleased to announce that thousands of images from the Smart Museum of Art’s collection are now available in LUNA. From the 14,000 objects in the Smart’s collection, there are now over 5,000 unique images of artwork from the collection encompassing multiple countries, cultures, and time periods. More images are being added on a regular basis. The collection can be found here

The collection in LUNA reflects the strengths of the Smart Museum of Art’s collection, which include modern, Asian, European, and contemporary art. Through this project, the VRC has made available PDFs of 17 sketchbooks belonging to H.C. Westermann and two Japanese albums of prints.

The collection is password protected and can be accessed using a CNet ID and password, making it available to all on-campus users. There is also a link provided to obtain a high-resolution image for publication or research. As the Spring Quarter begins, this is an invaluable resource for instructors, and students, who are interested in utilizing the museum collections in their own work.

Images clockwise from upper left:

 

Ukiyo-e.org: Aggregating and Analyzing Digitized Japanese Woodblock Prints

Ukiyo-e Search provides an incredible resource: the ability to run a reverse image search for Japanese woodblock prints and the ability to see similar prints across multiple collections at once. Over 220,000 prints and metadata have been aggregated from a variety of museums, universities, libraries, auction houses and dealers from around the world. The image and text search engine allows multiple copies of the same print to automatically line up with each other and are made viewable in a gallery for easy comparison. The entire website is also available in both English and Japanese. Ukiyo-e.org was created by John Resig, a computer programmer and avid enthusiast of Japanese woodblock prints who recently become a Visiting Researcher at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. This powerful tool is used frequently by UChicago faculty and aided the cataloging of several albums in the Smart Museum’s collection.

The Icons of Mount Sinai

Princeton University, in collaboration with the University of Michigan and the University of Alexandria, have announced the launch of a website documenting icons from the Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai.

The icons were documented and photographed on expeditions led by Kurt Weitzmann from Princeton University and George Forsyth from the University of Michigan from 1956 to 1965. Princeton University now holds the color photographs taken of the icons and have digitized them, making them available for viewing. Currently, the website displays about 1,200 transparencies, with another 2,000 in the works.

The images are the copyrighted property of the Regents of the University of Michigan and the Trustees of Princeton University, but can be freely used for  classroom projection, display on computer monitors, and use in class assignments. The images cannot be published without permission, but requesting permission can be easily done through the website.