Category: Museums

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Ancient Images on the Web Islamic Museums

The Nicholar Artamonoff Collection at Dumbarton Oaks

The Nicholar Artamonoff Collection at Dumbarton Oaks, an archive of historical photographs of Byzantine Turkey, is available online.

The Nicholas V. Artamonoff Collection includes 543 photographs taken in Istanbul and five archaeological sites in Western Turkey (Ephesus, Hierapolis, Laodicea on the Lycus, Pergamum, Priene) from 1935 to 1945. The high quality photographs are of great value as they show buildings, sites, and objects that no longer exist or are in a better state of preservation than today.

Photographs may be browsed by tag (keyword), site name, and geography. Each photograph also includes a correlating Google Map, allowing visitors to see historical

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Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary Museums News

What’s Going on in the Smart Museum Lobby?

It’s the installation of “Uppers and Downers,” a new collaboration from Chris Vorhees and SIMPARCH. Click on this link for updates throughout the week.

Uppers and Downers reworks the familiar kitchen setup of cabinetry, countertop, and sink into an abstracted version of a massive rainbow arching over a waterfall. This kitschy natural scene plays upon the utopian promise that restraint yields bliss: if only you eliminate excess and organize clutter to hide messy reality behind stylish surfaces, then happiness will follow. Or perhaps not.

Via The Smart Museum of Art Facebook page.

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Copyright Images on the Web Museums

High-Quality Images from the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum

The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum has made images from its “basic collection” – a little over 103,000 objects – available under a Creative Commons BY 3.0 license which allows you to:

  • Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
  • Remix — to adapt the work
  • Make commercial use of the work

These images may be used not only for classroom study and research but also for publishing, as long as the museum receives proper attribution. The collections database, in Dutch, is available here. Over 70,000 objects are also cataloged using ICONCLASS subject headings in English; this interface is available here. Click here for an example of the scan quality.

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Images on the Web Innovative Technology Museums

Sketchbooks from AIC’s Prints & Drawings Now Online

The Art Institute of Chicago has digitized several of its most-loved and important holdings from the Department of Prints & Drawings and Ryerson and Burnham Libraries with the help of Turning the Pages software. Website visitors can now peruse sketchbooks by artists like Paul Cézanne and Odilon Redon, as well as manuscripts and other printed materials.

VRC staff member Emilia Mickevicius had the rare opportunity to handle several of these objects while serving as a Metcalf Fellow at the Art Institute in Summer 2010. After each original object had been photographed using a copystand, Emilia used Photoshop to crop and color-correct the images, which were then loaded into Turning the Pages’ software program. The Art Institute hopes to add more materials to this online resource over time.

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Innovative Technology Museums

The Printed Picture at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art has launched an interactive website to accompany its 2008-2009 exhibition and catalogue, The Printed Picture. In videos embedded in the site, expert printer and catalog author Richard Benson explains the nature of processes ranging from engraving and woodcut to modern dye transfer and inkjet printing. The videos are supplemented by a comprehensive glossary of printing processes, fully updated to accommodate the rapidly changing technologies of our digital age.

Blog post contributed by VRC staff member Emilia Mickevicius.

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American Images on the Web Museums

MCNY Adds 35,000 Images to Online Collection

The Museum of the City of New York just added 35,000 new images to its online collections portal.

Highlights from these new collections include photographs taken by Stanley Kubrick when he was a staff photographer for LOOK Magazine in the late 1940’s; Thomas Nast‘s political cartoons from the late 1800’s; 19th century Currier & Ives lithographs colorfully and quaintly depicting American life; maps showing the city’s growth from the 17th century onward; and historic postcards from every borough in the city.

Low-resolution images may be downloaded for free and used in non-commercial scholarly research and classroom study. High resolution images are available for use in publications and on websites with a licensing fee.

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Images on the Web Innovative Technology Islamic Museums

Interactive Guide to Islamic Art Galleries at the Met

Last week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its new Islamic wing: Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia. The New York Times featured an interactive guide to the wing, including panoramic views of galleries which may be expanded to full-screen.

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Modern - Contemporary Museums

Artists Documentation Program

The Artists Documentation Program (ADP) interviews artists and their close associates in order to gain a better understanding of their materials, working techniques, and intent for conservation of their works. All interviews are conducted by conservators in a museum or studio setting.

To view the interviews, you must register and log in after agreeing to the ADP Acceptable Use Policy. Registration is free.

Categories
Exhibitions Images on the Web Medieval Museums

Pierpont Morgan Online Exhibitions: The Black Hours

The Morgan Library and Museum features online exhibitions, including high quality, zoom-able digital images of works in the collection. A recent example of this is the digital facsimile of The Black Hours (MS M.493), a Book of Hours from 1470 created on vellum and stained or painted black:

The result is quite arresting. The text is written in silver and gold, with gilt initials and line endings composed of chartreuse panels enlivened with yellow filigree. Gold foliage on a monochromatic blue background makes up the borders. The miniatures are executed in a restricted palette of blue, old rose, and light flesh tones, with dashes of green, gray, and white.

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology Islamic Museums

Virtual Museum of Iraq

Inaugurated in Italy, the Virtual Museum of Iraq includes tours of treasures from Baghdad’s National Museum:

Available in Arabic, English and Italian, the Virtual Museum of Iraq offers visitors the opportunity to move through eight virtual galleries and see highlights from the collection from the prehistoric to the Islamic period. Animated videoclips provide details.

Via The Ancient World Online