Category: Subject Areas

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Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary Museums

Smart Museum to Screen David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly

David Wojnarowicz’s 1986–87 video A Fire in My Belly is a poetic, unfinished tribute to the artist’s friend and colleague, Peter Hujar, who died of AIDS.

An excerpt of the work was recently removed from the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture following protests by a religious group and conservative politicians. In response to the Smithsonian’s decision to pull the work, institutions around the country have joined together to host screenings as a way to draw attention to its removal and to foster discussion around the work and issues of censorship.

The Smart Museum will be screening the original, 13-minute version of the film edited by Wojnarowicz in 1986–87 followed by a 7-minute additional chapter that was later found in his collection. It will be playing on continuous loop in a black box screening area.

The film will be screened from January 4 – February 6, 2011. Via Smart Museum of Art.

Categories
Copyright Images on the Web Innovative Technology Modern - Contemporary

Technology and Arts Libraries

A recent Princeton panel discussion summary sheds some light on current topics in arts libraries, including the ways access and preservation change in the digital world. Of note: an exploration of how new media artworks are captured and collected; a reflection on the myriad ways architects digitally design buildings (and the loss of information that sometimes results); and the copyright complexities of licensed, streaming musical performances.

Via IT’s Academic.

Categories
Modern - Contemporary

Oxford Art Online: Science and Contemporary Art

A recent article by Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel explores the relationships that exist between contemporary art and the sciences. Some of the dynamics explored include artists as amateur scientists, artists’ use of scientific tools and materials, and the visual culture of science. Read the full article here (University of Chicago affiliates only).

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology Medieval

Mapping Gothic France

With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France lets you explore parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries, considered in three dimensions: space, time, and narrative.

Via Geospatial Technologies in Education.

Categories
American Architecture Innovative Technology

Wright Guide for Mobile Devices

The new Wright Guide, developed by Azara Apps and adapted from William Allin Storrer’s The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, offers descriptions and a photograph of each of the built works by Frank Lloyd Wright. Building descriptions link to other nearby architecture as well as to directions from the user’s current location. Buildings may be searched through the index or by browsing location or date. Users can even keep track of which buildings they’ve visited in the application.

The app is $9.99 and compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with iOS 3.0 or later. It is available from the iTunes store.

Via Deep Focus.

Categories
Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary

Underwater Art Museum Helps Restore Coral Reef

Jason DeCaires Taylor creates environmental artwork by dropping cement casts of real people onto the ocean floor — creating artificial reefs that help restore coral ecosystems. His latest project, completed this month, is a massive collection of 400 sculptures off the coast of Cancun.

The sculptures will continue to evolve as sea creatures and plants colonize them. Video of the Cancun installation and photographs of previous transformations in Grenada are available on Science Friday’s blog Science & the Arts.

Categories
Modern - Contemporary Museums

“Degenerate” Sculptures Rediscovered in Berlin

Art labeled “degenerate” and thought destroyed during the Nazi regime was recently rediscovered during construction activity in Berlin.

In digs carried out throughout this year, archeologists have unearthed 11 sculptures thought to have been lost forever — valuable works of art that disappeared during World War II after having been included on the Nazis’ list of degenerate art. Most of them have now been identified and have been put on display in Berlin’s Neues Museum.

Via Spiegel Online.

Categories
American Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary

Manhattan Light Sculpture Plays with the Concept of Pixels

Electrical engineer and light sculptor Jim Campbell creates outdoor installations that quietly play with ideas of technological advancement and images. One work, called Scattered Light was recently installed in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park and comprises 1,600 lightbulbs fitted with LED bulbs. From afar, each bulb creates a kind of pixel, appearing flat as the shadows of people walking around the sculpture move through the light.

As the artist states in a videotaped interview:

“I see the work as an homage to the lightbulb, in a way… I like the light bulb shape. So I’m saying goodbye to it.”

For more information, please see the artist’s website.

Via Deep Focus.

Categories
East Asian Luna News

New LUNA Collection: Postcard Collection of Colonial Korea

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A new collection, Postcard Collection of Colonial Korea, is now available in LUNA. Included are over 7,500 postcard images of Korea during the first half of the 20th century from the Busan Museum.

Categories
East Asian Exhibitions Innovative Technology Museums

Highlighting the Smart Museum’s Buddhist Caves Exhibit

The most recent University of Chicago newsletter highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the Smart Museum‘s current exhibition, Echoes of the Past: The Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan:

Visitors can step inside re-creations of spaces and groupings of sculptural images that no longer exist today. The displays combine digital imagery of the caves with physical artifacts such as three-foot-tall limestone heads of bodhisattvas and the Buddha. The exhibition’s centerpiece is a multimedia installation known as a “digital cave,” designed by artist Jason Salavon, Assistant Professor in Visual Arts and the Computation Institute. Salavon conceived of the cave as an immersive experience, using multiple screens to give visitors a glimpse inside the largest temple at Xiangtangshan.

The article also discusses at length the extensive research undertaken by The University of Chicago’s Katherine Tsiang (exhibition curator) and Wu Hung, among others. This Sunday at 2pm, Jason Salavon will discuss the components of his installation in an Artist Talk at the Smart.

The exhibition will be open from September 30, 2010 to January 16, 2011 and, like all Smart Museum exhibitions, is free.