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Images on the Web Luna Modern - Contemporary News

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.

Categories
Image Quality Photography VRC

Keystoning Correction in Photoshop

Keystoning occurs when the subject is not parallel with the camera lense. For example, if the camera lense is closer to the bottom of the building, it will appear much larger than the top of the building in the photograph.

 

1. Double the size of the canvas. Image > Canvas Size
2. Select the entire image area.
3. Edit > Transform > Skew
To rectify right angles and retain proportions do not pull top corner fully out, but only halfway out, and then pull other corner halfway in, creating a fulcrum upon the midpoint of the line.

It may help to view the image with a grid. View > Show > Grid
4. Now crop out the superfluous two corners.

Categories
VRC

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: The New Edition

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently announced that it has released a new edition of the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

The timeline, which pairs essays and works of art with chronologies, tells the story of art, and global cultural, through the Museum’s collections. The new edition has been rethought with new navigation and interface, updated images, and restructured editorial content. It is also optimized to be responsive to both desktop and mobile devices.

 

 

Categories
East Asian Images on the Web News VRC

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.

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VRC

Living Collections Catalogue

The Walker Art Center recently announced the launch of a project – the Living Collections Catalogue. Published in volumes around a broad theme, each catalogue is a media-rich collection of essays focusing on that theme, as well as essays on particular works of art in the Walker collection.

The Walker states that it “aims to create a sustainable publishing platform that will be of service to academics and art enthusiasts. The designs adopt a visual aesthetic for navigation and page layouts blending the best qualities of the book, magazine, and online forms. With the release of new volumes, we anticipate adding new features and making improvements as our understanding of this hybrid environment—the intersection of a collections database with printed catalogue and digital reading environments continues to evolve.”

There are currently two catalogues on the site: On Performativity and Art Expanded, 1958-1978. A third catalog, on Merce Cunningham, is due in 2017.

Categories
Modern - Contemporary VRC

Visit “Lost Murals of Chicago” in the Vamonde App

Vamonde is a recently launched urban story telling app that uses curated content and GPS to connect users to significant places.

Rebecca Zorach, a professor of art history at Northwestern University created a module in Vamonde called “Lost Murals of Chicago” in which she takes app users to 8 murals in Chicago and provides information about the artists, how the murals were created, and other signifiant facts about the mural site. Vamonde provides a map with GPS walking directions from a user’s location to the mural site.

Check out the Vamonde app to go on your own walking tour of “Lost Murals of Chicago” or other tours on the app. Right now the app only features content from Chicago, and other tours such as “The Inside Track: Art on CTA” and “Humboldt Park: Jens Jensen’s Experimental Grounds” might be of interest. Vamonde is currently only available at the iTunes App Store and requires users to sign up for a free account.

For more images and information about the community mural movement in Chicago, visit the Public Art Workshop Mural Archive hosted by the VRC in Luna.

Categories
East Asian Images on the Web VRC

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.

Categories
Images on the Web Luna Museums VRC

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:

 

Categories
East Asian Images on the Web

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.

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Luna Scheduled Maintenance

LUNA will be unavailable Saturday 3/26 from 3 to 5pm

Luna will be down on Saturday afternoon from 3–5pm while the Library’s Digital Library Development Center upgrades its servers. We will keep you informed if Luna will be down for longer than expected.