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VRC

GYST

There’s a lot more to being a professional artist than just making art full time. Artists need to organize visual records of their work, develop artist statements, maintain contact lists, and track exhibits in which their work is shown. GYST is a software program designed by artists, for working artists, to make the business aspects of being an artist much simpler.

The program, which comes in a Basic and a Pro version, allows users to easily manage the business of selling artwork. While both versions offer tools to track artwork, archive resumes and artist’s statements, and offer legal information, the Pro version offers additional tools like sample contracts, condition reports, insurance information, and the ability to track expenses for supplies. Both versions are available for a 30-day free trial and come in PC and Mac versions

GYST has also published a manual for artists, offering advice on grant writing, residencies, and gallery representation, for example. There are worksheets and a reference section as well.

 

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Images on the Web News

Digitized Manuscripts from the Vatican Apostolic Library

 

The Vatican Apolostic Library has been working on a project to digitize more than 80,000 documents in its collection. Currently there are nearly 4,500 manuscripts online and there is hope that they’ll have 15,000 manuscripts available by 2018.

The collection features a variety of important and early manuscripts and books, including Pre-Columbian manuscripts, early Greek and Latin texts, Islamic manuscripts, and even some Japanese paintings.

You can browse some of the materials at DigitaVaticana here as well as on the website of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Images can be downloaded from the digital library, but they come with a watermark and copyright statement.

Image: Sandro Botticelli, Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy performed by Lorenzi il Magnifico in the 15th century. Folio 101 recto with a section of the Inferno. Reg.lat.1896A.

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Image Quality Photography Software VRC

Photoshop: Cutting Out the Background

Have you ever wanted to eliminate the distracting background from an object photographed on-site?  Cutting out the background can be very easy or a bit challenging, depending on how complex the image is. The magic wand tool can be a very effective tool when your background is simple in nature.

Step-by-step:

1. Select the magic wand tool from the toolbar.

2. Click on the area you want to sample. The magic wand will outline the area with flashing dotted lines.

3. Initially, the magic wand may only pick up some of the background. Hold the Shift key  and continue clicking on the areas to add to the selection until the object is isolated.

4. Use the Exposure tool to adjust the background to white or black, pulling it to the far right for white or far left for black.

5. You may need to use the clone tool or paintbrush to clean-up areas that the magic wand tool missed.

 

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Innovative Technology Photography VRC

Flickr App for iPad!

Flickr recently announced that they’ve developed an app for the iPad and iOS 8!

Now iPad users can view high-resolution images on the large retina dislpay screens, as well as share, fave, and comment on photos from other contributors. There are new tools for organizing your photos and a more robust search feature.

Additionally, the app includes a built-in camera interface, so photos taken with the iPad can be edited and uploaded directly into Flickr. There’s a small set of editing tools and filters, too.

For more information, visit the iTunes App Store, or stop by the VRC and check it out on our iPad!!

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VRC

MoMA App

The Museum of Modern Art has created an App for iOS devices. Available for free from iTunes, the app features tours with curators and artists, a calendar of upcoming exhibits and events, the ability to photograph and share artwork from the museum, as well as a directory and map of the museum.

 

To find out more, and to watch a video about the app, visit the museum’s page

The app can be downloaded for free from iTunes

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VRC

Liminal Camera at the Logan Center, Chicago Humanities Festival

Visit the Liminal Camera on October 26th from 12-2 at the Logan Center Courtyard, 915 E. 60th Street. Made out of a shipping container, the Liminal Camera is the world’s largest pinhole camera, traversing the country by land and water. Join artists Lauren Bon, Richard Nielsen, and Tristan Duke to climb inside the camera at the Logan or head up to Depaul Art Museum for a live photo developing demo on October 29th. The Chicago Humanities Festival runs from October 25 – November 9.

 

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Exhibitions VRC

En Guerre: French Illustrators and World War I

A new exhibition has opened at the Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery in the Regenstein Library.

On the centenary of the Great War’s commencement, En Guerre: French Illustrators and World War I explores the conflict through French graphic illustration of the period. The exhibition presents themes essential to a deeper understanding of the war in France: patriotism, propaganda, the soldier’s experience, as well as the mobilization of the home front as seen through fashion, humor, and children’s literature.

Organized by Professor Neil Harris and Dr. Teri J. Edelstein for the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago Library, the exhibition features more than one hundred and thirty examples of the colorful work of French illustrators. En Guerre reaffirms the persuasive role that art can play in servicing or challenging political and military power.

A website accompanies the exhibit and a catalog is available for purchase through the University of Chicago Press.

 

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Architecture

Open House Chicago This Weekend, October 18-19

Don’t miss the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s fourth annual Open House Chicago, a free public festival that offers behind-the-scenes access to 150 buildings across Chicago. Explore repurposed mansions, hidden rooms, sacred spaces, private clubs, iconic theaters, hotels and more.  Highlights include an airstream trailer on top of a roof between the Montrose and Damen Brown Line stations, a meticulously restored Frank Lloyd Wright home in Rogers Park, and a former meatpacking warehouse turned vertical urban farm.

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Luna News VRC

Public Art Workshop Mural Archive Now Available in LUNA

In collaboration with Art History Professor Rebecca Zorach and Chicago artist, Mark Rogovin, the VRC is happy to announce the “Public Art Workshop Mural Archive“, a new collection in our LUNA database.
The collection contains images of murals and public projects of the Public Art Workshop, along with documentation of the workshop’s activities and images of other murals created in Chicago from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

To read more about Mark Rogovin, please visit Never the Same.

Categories
Images on the Web Museums

New Zealand Museum Releases 30,000 Images

The Te Papa Museum of New Zeland has released more than 30,000 high resolution images for download and re-use! To find images that can be reused, the search box is equipped with a radio button to allow users to select “with downloadable images.”

The Te Papa museum collection contains “artworks, objects, and specimens,” from “dinosaur teeth to contemporary art,” and as such presents two advanced search options for object and specimen to allow users to query different metadata fields.

For more information about the Creative Commons license governing the re-use of Te Papa’s images, check out their recent blog post about the initiative. Click here to explore the collection!