All Things Visual: The University of Chicago Visual Resources Center

Just in time for this great weather, Curbed Chicago and the Chicago Public Art Group have created a Google Map identifying great examples of public art underneath Chicago’s overpasses. The map includes several murals that are in Hyde Park, so happy exploring!

For more information about public art resources, see our post about the Public Art Archive.

Via Curbed

The Public Art Archive, launched in 2009, is a collective online resource of public art examples from around the world. The site features fully cataloged works, sophisticated searching, browse-by lists, and a mapping function using Google Maps.

The Public Art Archive™ houses thousands of public artwork records in a single, centrally located database, making these works easily accessible to all audiences, including researchers, authors, academics, policy-makers, tourists, artists, administrators, and the general public. The Archive is the only resource of its kind that offers the field standardized and highly rigorous metadata structures, controlled taxonomies, advanced mapping features, and sophisticated search and filter tools.

For more information, visit the Public Art Archive or click here to find out about how to add your own images.

The Public Art Archive™, a new project of the Western States Arts Federation, or WESTAF (www.westaf.org), is a sophisticated searchable database of public art in the United States. The Archive makes public art and its processes more accessible to the public, displaying images of each piece alongside an extensive description, including audio and video supplementary files when available.

Google maps has been integrated into the Public Art Archive™. Users can see works on a map, get driving or walking directions, and save the map for later use. Cultural tourists can create a map of works that they wish to visit and use a mobile device to access information about a piece while physically standing in front of it.

Electrical engineer and light sculptor Jim Campbell creates outdoor installations that quietly play with ideas of technological advancement and images. One work, called Scattered Light was recently installed in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park and comprises 1,600 lightbulbs fitted with LED bulbs. From afar, each bulb creates a kind of pixel, appearing flat as the shadows of people walking around the sculpture move through the light.

As the artist states in a videotaped interview:

“I see the work as an homage to the lightbulb, in a way… I like the light bulb shape. So I’m saying goodbye to it.”

For more information, please see the artist’s website.

Via Deep Focus.