Category: News

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Museums News

Black Odyssey Remixes: A Romare Bearden iPad App

To accompany the new show from the Smithsonian’s Traveling Exhibition Service, “Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey,” an interactive iPad app has been created to allow users to remix Bearden’s Odyssey collages. The app also allows users to incorporate music in their collage. From the app description:

In 1977, Romare Bearden created a series of collages inspired by the ancient poet Homer and his epic story “The Odyssey.” Bearden believed that “all of us from the time we begin to think are on an odyssey.” The Romare Bearden collage app, developed by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in conjunction with the national traveling exhibition “Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey,” was created with Bearden’s quote in mind.

With this lively, colorful, and highly engaging app, you can remix works from Bearden’s original series to create your own unique works of art, and express your personal journey. Choose from a variety of Bearden’s backdrops and layer in shapes and forms from other collages. Or cut your own shapes, add personal photos, change the colors of various elements and resize them. You can also add your words and your descriptions.

Music played a big role in Bearden’s life and his art, so the app also incorporates sound. While you build your collages, you can mash up audio such as ocean waves, jazz riffs, warriors fighting, or even your own voice. An option to record the user’s voice is also included and can be played back in a loop as the artwork is being created.

Save your visual collages and post them to a public gallery–where they can be tagged and revisited by other users–and share with friends on Facebook, Twitter, or email. You can also learn more about the traveling exhibition, Bearden’s life, and the companion exhibition audio tour app.

The app was created by GuideOne for the Smithsonian Institute. For more information, visit the iTunes App Store or stop by the VRC to play!

Via ArtNews

 

Categories
Image Quality Images on the Web Museums News

Rijksmuseum’s Collection Available Online Through RijksStudio

Today, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdamn is launching RijksStudio, a digital collection of 125,000 works in the collection. We posted about the first installment about a year ago, and now they’ve fully unveiled their impressive new image platform.

All works in the RijksStudio are available for users to download for personal use as a high-quality jpeg image file. (Using images for professional and commercial uses is possible, but requires filling out a form to obtain permission from the museum). Depending on the type of use, print, and format, images can be downloaded either free or charge or for a fee.

 

In addition to browsing and searching the collection, you can create image groups or explore the image groups of other users. In depth content such as context about art movements, artists’ biographies, and other historical events is available when browsing through facets or when viewing an individual work. Images can be shared on various public media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Pintrest. You can also easily order reproductions of the images.

The image records for objects in the collection contain an absolute wealth of information, including basic object data, exhibition histories, provenance, related artworks, copyright status, and a section called “Documentation,” which serves as a bibliography of the object with links to published references of the work including scholarly articles, monographs, and exhibition catalogs. When online content is available, the object data includes links—for example, links to JSTOR articles.

You can create an account using your email address or log in through your Facebook account. For more information or to start exploring, click here.

Via ArtDaily

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News Precolumbian VRC

Tomb of Lady K’abel, Maya Queen, Found in Guatemala

Archaeologists from Washington University in St. Louis have discovered the tomb of Lady K’abel in the royal Maya city of El Perú-Waka’ in northern Petén, Guatemala. Lady K’abel was a seventh-century Maya Holy Snake Lord and is considered one of the great queens of Classic Maya civilization.

Washington University reports:

A small, carved alabaster jar found in the burial chamber caused the archaeologists to conclude the tomb was that of Lady K’abel.

The white jar is carved as a conch shell, with a head and arm of an aged woman emerging from the opening. The depiction of the woman, mature with a lined face and a strand of hair in front of her ear, and four glyphs carved into the jar, point to the jar as belonging to K’abel.

For more information on the excavation and the site of the tomb, check out the news release here, which also contains a link to the full report by the archaeologists on the discovery.

Additionally, Lady K’abel is depicted on Stela 34 of El Perú, located at the Cleveland Art Museum. Her husband, K’inich Bahlam, is depicted on Stela 33.

Front Face of a Stela, 692, Mesoamerica, Southern Lowlands, Maya People. Cleveland Art Museum, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1967.29.

Categories
Innovative Technology Museums News

MetPublications Now Online

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently launched a new feature on their website called MetPublications:

MetPublications is a portal to the Met’s comprehensive publishing program. Beginning with nearly 650 titles published from 1964 to the present, this resource will continue to expand and could eventually offer access to nearly all books, Bulletins, and Journals published by the Metropolitan Museum since the Met’s founding in 1870. It will also include online publications.

MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for almost every title, as well as information about the authors, reviews, awards, and links to related Met bibliographies by author, theme, or keyword. Current titles that are in-print may be previewed and fully searched online, with a link to purchase the book. The full contents of almost all other titles may be read online, searched, or downloaded as a PDF, at no cost. Books can be previewed or read and searched through the Google Books program. Many out-of-print books are available for purchase, when rights permit, through print-on-demand capabilities in association with Yale University Press.

Currently, there are  368 titles with full text online, which can be read online in Google Books or downloaded as a PDF.

Categories
News VRC

Visit the VRC & Check out our iPad 2!

 

Welcome back students and faculty! To start the new school year off right, our iPad 2 is now set up in the VRC. We hope you’ll come check it out in CWAC 257.

We’ve installed a lot of great apps about art and images that have been featured on our blog and Facebook page and other programs that are useful for art historians, including Keynote. There’s also quick links to LUNA, Chalk, and ARTstor.

We also installed a great app called Flipboard, which we’ve set to display RSS feeds from other blogs pertaining to art, culture, and museums. Flipboard takes these feeds and displays them like a magazine [see screenshot above], making it easy to catch up on the latest news and research.

There’s also a wireless keyboard to go with the iPad, so you can easily check your email, look up campus events, or catch up on the news.

And, as always, the VRC’s iPad 2 can be reserved to teach and present in CWAC.

We look forward to seeing you!

Categories
Images by Subscription Moving Images News

Cinema Image Gallery Database Trial

The University of Chicago now has trial access to Cinema Image Gallery, an EBSCO database featuring pictures, posters, video clips, film stills and other materials from the world of moving images, starting in the late 19th century and continuing to present day.

Cinema Image Gallery presents the history of moviemaking, as well as up-to-the-minute content from recent releases, and an extensive collection of television stills.

Content Includes:

  • More than 217,000 superior-quality images
  • A treasure trove of more than 6,200 posters and lobby cards used to promote movies
  • Links to 160 full movies, and to biographical materials about notable figures in the industry
  • Portrait photography and biographies of the stars of film and television
  • Database-specific search parameters developed specifically for this resource—Title, Director, Actor Names, Genre, Awards (Academy Award, Cannes Film Festival, Screen Actors Guild)—to ensure accuracy and speed in locating relevant material

Access the trial on-campus here. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Categories
News Precolumbian

Newly Discovered Maya Temple a “Gold Mine” of Information for Precolumbian Scholars

Deep in the heart of the Guatemalan jungle, archaeologists have unearthed an important Maya temple thought to be at least 1,600 years old. Distinguished by giant masked faces depicting the sun god, the “Temple of the Night Sun” at El Zotz holds great potential for helping researchers further their understanding of Early Classic Maya religious practices.

Project leader Stephen Houston of Brown University explains that since Maya culture closely linked the sun god with kingship and the sun with new beginnings, the temple’s emphasis on the sun suggests that the individual buried inside was El Zotz’s first king. Furthermore, the Maya considered the structure itself to be a living being, which propelled them to continuously add new layers to its exterior. Systematic mutilation of the masks’ noses, mouths, and eyes, Houston believes, can also be thought of as “deactivation” of those features: “It’s as if they’re turning the masks off in preparation for replicating them in subsequent layers … It’s not an act of disrespect. It’s quite the opposite.”

This discovery is newly relevant to the University of Chicago art history department, since Fall 2012 marks the welcoming of Assistant Professor Claudia Brittenham, who will instruct students in Precolumbian art. In preparation for her arrival, student catalogers and scanners at the Visual Resources Center have been hard at work digitizing images for Professor Brittenham’s classes and research. Be on the lookout for an abundance of new images relating to Precolumbian art set to be uploaded to LUNA by the end of the summer!

–Emilia Mickevicius

Via National Geographic.

Categories
News VRC

VRC Summer Hours

Youngster Unknowingly Has Shared Her Ice Cream Stick with the Dog as She Watches Judging During the Kiddies Parade in Johnson Park in New Ulm, Minnesota

The Visual Resources Center will operate on a reduced summer schedule through Friday, August 31st.

Our summer hours will be 8:30am – 5pm, Monday-Thursday, closed Friday.

Happy summer!

Categories
East Asian News

New-Terra Cotta Warriors Unearthed in China

New Trove of Terra-Cotta Warriors Unearthed in China: Archeologists at work on Saturday.

From the New York Times’ ArtsBeat:

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed 110 new terra-cotta soldiers of the kind that stunned the world in the 1970s when thousands of such figures were discovered at Xian in central China, part of a tomb army built to guard China’s first emperor in the afterlife.

Agence France-Presse reported that the newly excavated life-size warriors were found near the Qin emperor Ying Zheng’s mausoleum over the course of three years and that archaeologists also uncovered 12 pottery horses and parts of chariots, as well as weapons and tools.

Categories
Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary News

Theaster Gates in “Shows That are Changing the Art World”

In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Chicago artist Theaster Gates is featured in a discussion of “shows that are changing the art world.”

Visit Theaster Gates’ website, and read more about his projects utilizing slide donations from the UofC Visual Resources Center here.