Categories
Museums News Photography

Getty Releases New Atlas of Photo Processes

The Getty Conservation Institute recently released a new resource called the Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes, which provides a growing collection of in-depth PDF guides of various photographic processes and their variants. The goal of the project is to help researchers and those working with photography collections correctly identify the photographic process of specific prints in their collections so as to make the safest decisions regarding the conservation, exhibition, and storage of the works.

The Atlas currently contains guides to eleven processes, including Albumen, Silver Gelatin, and Photogravure, and combines historic information about the process with information about how artists were using the technique in the darkroom, as well as contemporary conservation science knowledge.

For more information, explore the Atlas of Analytical Signatures of Photographic Processes.

Via ArtDaily

Categories
Innovative Technology News VRC

Artsy Launches New iPhone App

We’ve been covering the news about Artsy since its launch in October 2012 and the announcement earlier this month that it is releasing more than 25,000 images for download. Their next big move is the debut of an iPhone app that takes full advantage of many features in the newly released iOS 7.

The Artsy App is free to downloaded and is updated daily. Currently, it contains more than 50,000 high quality images of artworks that can be searched or browsed across several categories, including subject matter, medium/technique, and style and movement. The app also contains up-to-date information about art world happenings, including exhibitions, art fairs, and auctions.

You can take advantage of the new Parallax feature in iOS 7, which helps Artsy’s feature “View in Room” to engage with artworks as if they were in a gallery setting. Users can also email works of art, save, copy, and print directly from within the app.

We’ve installed the Artsy App on the VRC’s iPad, so feel free to check it out on your own or swing by the VRC to see ours!

Via ArtDaily.

Categories
VRC

New Guide to Citing Images of Art

The VRC has added a new guide to Citing Images and Other Arts-Related Sources to our website! This rounds out a trio of new guides this fall, all geared towards helping you manage the “stuff” of art history— Citing Images, Managing Images, and Photographing & Editing Images.

We hope to see you this afternoon for a panel on Tips & Tricks for Researching in Archives, Museums, and More! which will be today at 4:30 pm in CWAC 152. We’ll hear from 4:30 pm in CWAC 152. Persis Berlekamp (Associate Professor, Art History), Hillary Chute (Assistant Professor, English), Angele Rosenberg (Student, Ancient Art), Jen Cohen (Student, Modern Art), and Amanda Rybin (Associate Director, Visual Resources Center) will be presenting on their experiences and will be happy to answer questions.

 

Categories
Innovative Technology News

Expore Photos from Around the World with Panoramio

Panoramio is a photo-sharing community powered by Google that allows users to tag their photos with geographic information so they can be plotted on a map and searched for by location. You can browse by location, and click on individual images from the map, or search for specific sites and locations.

Some of the images are indeed panoramas, and Panoramio includes both flat and spherical panoramas (the latter provide a 360º of a place). For example, check out this haunting spherical panorama of the Holocaust Monument in Berlin.

This website is useful for studying architecture, cities, and the built environment, and it’s also great for some arm-chair traveling. You can also add your own images to the project.

For more information or to start exploring, check out Panoramio!

Categories
VRC

Making and Managing Your Personal Image Collection

The VRC recently added two new pages to our website to help you take photographs and manage your collection of art images. This is especially useful for students and faculty preparing for a research trip or a large writing project.

In our guide Personal Image Management, we discuss when and why you might choose to have a personal image management system installed on your own computer. The VRC recommends Adobe Bridge and Extensis Portfolio, and our guide describes the pros and cons of each of these systems, as well as some other ideas about how best to manage and back up your image collection.

On a similar note, our guide on Photographing Art, Editing Images, and Digital Camera Recommendations discusses the process of capturing your own images of artworks or archival materials in museums, libraries, archives, private collections, and other cultural repositories. Everything from camera recommendations to preferred settings and techniques for taking photographs is discussed, and a variety of free and low-cost image editing software programs are outlined.

Please consider attending the October 10 panel Tips & Tricks for Researching in Archives, Museums, and More! on Thursday 10/10 at 4:30 pm in CWAC 152. Persis Berlekamp (Associate Professor, Art History), Hillary Chute (Assistant Professor, English), Angele Rosenberg (Student, Ancient Art), Jen Cohen (Student, Modern Art), and Amanda Rybin (Associate Director, Visual Resources Center) will be presenting on their experiences and will be happy to answer questions.

In addition, the VRC is more than happy to schedule an individual consultation to discuss your needs—just contact us!

Categories
Images on the Web Museums VRC

Kalamazoo Institute of Arts’ New eMuseum Collection

In July, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts launched a new digital collections website in eMuseum, which allows users to view more than 4,000 of the museum’s works online. The museum focuses on “American painting, sculpture, and ceramics; American and European works on paper (16th century and later); and photography.”

To explore the KIA’s 4,200 works on the web, search or browse their Collections website. The website allows users to view an enlarged version of the work and provides basic catalog records.

For more information on eMuseum, visit our previous blog post on the topic, or conduct a federated search on the collections of more than 600 cultural institutions that host their collections in Gallery Systems’ eMuseum software.

Via ArtDaily

Categories
ARTstor News Powerpoint VRC

Recent Improvements to ARTstor

In August, ARTstor made several improvements to the ARTstor Digital Library, including:

  • Export 2,000 images to PowerPoint in a 120-day period with up to 150 images per download. (Was previously 1,000 images in a 120-day period).
  • Browse through image groups from the Image Group Panel. After opening an Image Group, there will be a tab in the Image Group panel where you can navigate to another image group.

If you have any questions about ARTstor’s new (or old!) features, please do not hesitate to get in contact with the VRC.

Categories
VRC

UChicago’s Cultural Policy Center Fall Workshop Series

The Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago’s Harris School just announced its fall workshop series, which will consider various aspects of “Publishing and Libraries” throughout the quarter. All lectures will take place in the Harris School, room 289B, and are free and open to the public, with no RSVP required.

The first lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 8:
The Mediated Book: eBooks and the Digital Library
Tuesday, October 8, 12–1:20pm
Randal C. Picker “will look at the intersection of law and technological change first for the individual book and then for collections of books.”

Subsequent workshops will cover topics such as:

  • Teens, Digital Media, and the Chicago Public Library (10/15)
  • Après la Révolution: Publishing in the Post-Digital World (10/22)
  • The Human Knowledge Project (10/29)
  • Books, Libraries, and the Changing Digital Landscape (11/12)
  • Making Cents of Art (11/21)

For more information, check out the Cultural Policy Center’s Events.

Categories
Images on the Web News

Image and Research Resources Impacted by the Government Shutdown

Photograph of Socks the Cat Standing on the Press Podium in the Press Room at the White House: 12/05/1993
Photograph of Socks the Cat Standing on the Press Podium in the Press Room at the White House: 12/05/1993, courtesy U.S. National Archives Flickr Photostream

Below please find a partial list of image and online research resources that are impacted by this week’s federal government shutdown. We will continue to add to this list as more information is available.

Resources currently offline:

Library of Congress, including Prints & Photographs Catalog, Subject Authority Files, and the American Memory Project

NASA, including the NASA image exchange

Institute of Education Sciences

National Park Service

Census Bureau

The following sites are currently still available online, though they may not be updated during the shutdown:

Smithsonian Institution, including the Collections Search Center at http://collections.si.edu/search/

National Gallery of Art

National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health

Online Public Access (formerly known as ARC) for the National Archives at http://www.archives.gov/research/search/

US Army Corps of Engineers

Bureau of Labor Statistics

List courtesy of Heather Cleary, Otis College of Art and Design via the Visual Resources Association listserv.

 

Categories
News Photography VRC

Largest Film Camera in the World in Chicago

The world’s largest film camera is currently at Two North Riverside Plaza, and will be there through Thursday, October 31. The camera was built in order to be used in a project by photographer Dennis Manarchy, from Rockford, IL, called Butterflies & Buffalo: Tales of American Culture.

The camera is 35 feet long, and makes photographs that are larger than life size—more than six feet tall and four feet wide! Manarchy’s project is to make portraits to document at least 50 distinct cultural groups in the United States and plans to travel more than 20,000 miles in order to capture such wide diversity. I’m curious about how they’ll make a darkroom big enough to develop a piece of film that’s bigger than they are!

For more information, visit the Butterflies & Buffalo website, watch the preview for the project on Vimeo, follow them on Facebook or Twitter, or swing by the West Loop to see the camera for yourself.

Via Chicagoist