Category: Museums

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Images on the Web Museums

Images from Walters Art Museum Available for Download

The Walters Art Museum announces the launch of its redesigned works of art website with the removal of copyright restrictions on more than 10,000 online artwork images through a Creative Commons license . In addition to being able to download these images for free, the site introduces a new look and feel, and enhanced searching, tagging and community collections features. The website now has additional information about the artworks, including nearly a century of history concerning exhibitions and conservation treatments. It is also substantially more accessible to users with disabilities due to its increased compliance with the United States government’s internet accessibility standards.

The Creative Commons license specifies that these images may not be used for commercial purposes. Publication in not-for-profit academic journals or dissertations is probably approved, but you may consider contacting the museum or journal for more information.

For a full list of copyright-free and -lenient images for academic publication, click here.

 

Categories
Images on the Web Museums

High Resolution Images from the Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art launched a new website this week, complete with high-resolution images available for download (for educational purposes).To download a high-res image, either search or browse the collections. Select an individual work, then click full view. Click the symbol at lower right to “Download HD Image.” This will bring you to a new screen where you can either right-click (PC) or control-click (Mac) to save.

If you’re on a PC, you can also zoom to a detail in the full view and right-click to save it. If you have a MyMet account, images may be grouped in your account for later reference.

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Ancient Images on the Web Innovative Technology Museums

Dead Sea Scrolls Digitized and Available Online

The Dead Sea Scrolls, so ancient and fragile that direct light cannot shine on them, are now available to search and read online in a project launched today by the Israel Museum and Google Inc.

Via Bloomberg. See the scrolls online here.

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East Asian Images on the Web Innovative Technology Museums

Bayerische Staatsbibliotek for iPad

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek now presents 20 manuscripts from its voluminous Oriental collection in the form of an application for iPads and iPhones. The “Oriental books” are available free of charge in the Apple App Store.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek also presents the application “Famous books – Treasures of the Bavarian State Library” for iPads and iPhones, which features 52 highlights of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek’s collections.

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Images on the Web Innovative Technology Museums

Corpus Vitrearum Deutschland’s Stained Glass Archive

The Corpus Vitrearum Deutschland is part of the International Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi (CVMA), which was founded to share the entire stock of medieval stained glass in museums in Europe, Canada and the United States. The CVMA German Picture Archive includes over 500 high quality photographs of stained glass, available to the public for teaching and research. Detail views of the stained glass include location information plotted on a Google Map. Website and associated search function available in German.

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Copyright Image Quality Images on the Web Museums

High Quality Images for Academic Publishing

Are you hungry for high quality, publishable images to use in your dissertation or manuscript? Trying to avoid expensive licensing fees? Not sure what images are in the public domain?

If so, consider the following resources for copyright-free or copyright-lenient images. Most image sites include both high and low resolution images, with high quality TIFFs available upon request. Please note that each resource/institution may have specific requirements for attribution or limits on print runs. When in doubt, contact the institution before using the images in your publication.

Do you know of additional resources that we should add? Contact us!

General Resources and Guides

Museum Image Resources

Image Resources by Subject

Illustration

Islamic

Medieval

  • Index of Christian Art: Romanesque
  • Index of Christian Art: Lois Drewer Database
  • International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art: Peregrinations Photo-bank

Photography

Royalty-Free Images (One-time Fee)

  • Archivision Stock Photos
Categories
Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary Museums

Interactive Tour of the Barnes Foundation

The New York Times provides an interactive tour of the old Barnes Foundation museum, which has since closed and will reopen in Philadelphia next year. Click on any painting outlined in white for more information, and click and drag your cursor to move throughout each room.

The Barnes Foundation, an extraordinary collection of art amassed by Albert C. Barnes, has been one of America’s strangest art museums from the day its doors opened in 1925. Barnes’s unique juxtapositions of paintings and objects were intended to help the viewer learn to look closely at art.

 

Categories
Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary Museums

The Met’s “Opportunity on Madison”

Last week The New York Times published an opinion piece titled “Opportunity on Madison,” or What the Met Should Do When It Moves into The Whitney. The author discusses The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recent lease of The Whitney Museum’s Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue (to be vacated by The Whitney in 2015) and the Met’s decision to display collections of modern and contemporary art there.

I love the 1966 Breuer design. With its trapezoidal windows and stepped-back facade, it’s what the Guggenheim isn’t: starchitecture with the right amount of ego, meaning that it works for art. Almost everything looks good in it. And the Met’s residency, contracted to last at least eight years, seems like a great idea on paper. The Whitney Museum of American Art gets to keep its celebrated building, and the Met, which can never show more than a small fraction of its encyclopedic collection, gets some desperately needed space.

But the Met’s use of that space primarily for new art would be a big mistake.

What do you think? Should The Met utilize the space to house curated shows that include art from many eras, as the author suggests, or for contemporary and modern art, or something else?

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Innovative Technology Museums

Connections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Connections invites its diverse staff to offer their personal perspectives on works of art in the Museum’s vast collection. Their voices range from the authoritative to the highly subjective, and touch upon any number of themes and concepts.

Connections is a year-long series comprising of 100 episodes, and inspires fresh ways to approach art. Throughout 2011, please join us on Wednesdays for weekly releases.

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Images on the Web Islamic Museums

Islamic Manuscripts of the Walters Art Museum

With the help of a Preservation and Access Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and with additional funding from an anonymous donor, the Walters has completed its program to create digital surrogates of its collection of Islamic manuscripts and single leaves. Images are free for any noncommercial use, provided you follow the terms of the Creative Commons license specified by the museum.

Images of the manuscript are available for download from Flickr, including high-resolution images. Full manuscript PDFs (including data) are also available on the Walters website (see the above example here).