Category: Subject Areas

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Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary News VRC

DOCUMERICA Photos from the 1970s

In the early 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency hired more than 70 freelance photographers to take pictures of life in the United States as it intersected with the environment for the Project DOCUMERICA (1971–77). The National Archives has digitized more than 15,000 images from the project, and they are available online via NARA’s online catalog or though a Flickr collection that is much easier to browse.

You can browse by image topic, location, or photographer—and that’s where things start to get really interesting. Photographers hired for the project include Danny Lyon (AB ’63) and photojournalist John H. White (born 1945) who worked for the Chicago Defender and was recently laid off from the Chicago Sun Times along with the rest of their staff photographers.

Because the project was funded by the federal government, there are no copyright restrictions on the images, and users can download 300 dpi original size files from the Flickr collection. For more information and to explore the collection, visit Flickr and the National Archives.

Via Peta Pixel

Image: Danny Lyon. Albuquerque Speedway Park, One of Three Stock Car Race Tracks in Albuquerque, May 1972. 412-DA-2825. Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.

Categories
Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary Museums News

Rauschenberg Research Project

SFMOMA recently launched a new web module, the Rauschenberg Research Project, which presents more than 85 works by the artist along with related contextual and archival materials. SFMOMA holds the premier collection of Rauschenberg’s work, spanning his career from 1949–98, including combines, sculptures, paintings, photographs, prints, and works on paper.

Each artwork record includes robust cataloging data based on up-t0-date research by SFMOMA, multiple views of the object with conservation notes, contextual essays on the object’s creation and life, and ownership, exhibition, and publication histories. There are also links to related archival materials including interview videos, curatorial documents and museum files, and related artworks.

Users have the option to download content from the website, including images that are of suitable size and quality for PowerPoint presentations and PDFs of the work catalog records and the contextual essay, as well as the option to download all available materials in a zipped folder.

The project was developed by SFMOMA in conjunction with the Getty’s Online Scholarly Catalog Initiative and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

For more information and to explore the online collection, check out the Rauschenberg Research Project.

Via ArtDaily and Iris (The Getty).

Categories
Images on the Web Renaissance - Baroque

Italian Renaissance Learning Resources

Oxford University Press’s Grove Art Online and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, have created a new web module called Italian Renaissance Learning Resources with the support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The module features eight units that provide thematic access to the art of the Italian Renaissance: Virgin and Child, Picturing Family and Friends, The Making of an Artist, a New World of Learning, Presentation of Self, Time and Narrative, Recovering the Golden Age, and Artists and Patrons. The eight units are can be cross-searched, and essays are presented for each theme. The website features more than 340 images as well as a host of other educational resources, including selections from primary source texts (transcribed but not digitally reproduced), a glossary, as well as discussion questions and activities for classroom use.

For more information, visit the Italian Renaissance Learning Resources.

Categories
Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary News

The Chicagoan Digital Archive

During the Jazz Age, The Chicagoan magazine was published as a rip-off of the New Yorker, but for the Second City set. Although its writing was less-than-stellar, the magazine covers and interior illustrations were more than. Neil Harris, Preston & Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus of History and of Art History began researching the magazine in the late 1980s when he stumbled across it in the Regenstein library, and now a near-complete run is digitally available through the University of Chicago Library in The Chicagoan digital archive. The magazine’s run can be browsed on the web by date or by volume, and is also full-text searchable. In 2008, Harris published a book about the magazine, which folded in 1935, called The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.

For more information, check out The Chicagoan digital archive and Harris’ book The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age.

Via Chicago Reader

Image: The Chicagoan, June 14, 1926 (vol. 1, no. 1), cover. Copyright The Quigley Publishing Company, a Division of QP Media, Inc.

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Exhibitions Images by Subscription Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary Museums News VRC

AFRICOBRA in Chicago (and in LUNA)

Tomorrow, the Philosophy show of the three-part AFRICOBRA in Chicago exhibition opens at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. AFRICOBRA in Chicago presents three current and upcoming shows in Chicago take a deserved look at the Black Arts Movement in Chicago and the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AFRICOBRA), which was founded in 1968 by a group of Chicago artists. The three parts of the AFRICOBRA in Chicago exhibition are as follows:

  • Prologue, South Side Community Art Center, May 10–July 7, 2013 (curated by UChicago students)
  • Philosophy, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, June 28–August 7, 2013 (curated by Rebecca Zorach)
  • Art and Impact, DuSable Museum, July 26–September 29, 2013

Many works from the exhibitions are from the collection of the South Side Community Art Center. The VRC is proud to include over 350 images from the SSCAC publicly in our online LUNA database.

For more information about the exhibits, visit the AFRICOBRA in Chicago website.

Via UChicago News

Categories
Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary

The Artists’ Books Showcase

The Manuscript, Archive, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) at Emory University has recently launched an online exhibit for their extensive collection of artists’ books called The Artists’ Books Showcase. The website features a gallery of images of artists’ books photographed by the artists themselves as well as essay content about the works, including techniques and contextual information. A section of the website features artists books made by Emory undergraduate students.

For more information and to explore the online exhibit, visit the Artists’ Books Showcase.

Categories
Modern - Contemporary News

Map of Overpass Art in Chicago

Just in time for this great weather, Curbed Chicago and the Chicago Public Art Group have created a Google Map identifying great examples of public art underneath Chicago’s overpasses. The map includes several murals that are in Hyde Park, so happy exploring!

For more information about public art resources, see our post about the Public Art Archive.

Via Curbed

Categories
Exhibitions Modern - Contemporary Museums News

A Van Gogh Research Round-Up

With the conclusion of an eight-year long research project, Vincent van Gogh has been in the news quite a bit recently. In 2005, the van Gogh museum teamed up with Shell and the Netherland’s Cultural Heritage Agency to research the materials, tools, techniques, and working processes of the artist. The website for the research project, Van Gogh’s Studio Practice, describes contains blog posts about how the researchers approached their work and describes the aims of their research. The results of the project were not earth-shattering, but the small surprises they discovered do deepen our understanding of van Gogh’s works and his psyche. The most talked about new discovery is the fact that The Bedroom was originally painted with violet walls, but since the red pigment of the paint faded, we know the work as having blue walls.

The new exhibition at the van Gogh Museum benefits from results of this lengthy research project, and is called Van Gogh at Work (May 1, 2013–January 12, 2014). The show will contain 200 works by van Gogh as well as some contemporary artists, as well as archival materials such as letters, sketchbooks, and the artist’s palette and paint tubes. The show will also include a digital re-creation of The Bedroom to show how it would have looked with the original violet walls.

The Van Gogh Museum also has a web portal for van Gogh’s letters (written and received) that contains facsimiles, transcriptions, and detailed object information of some 900 letters and 25 miscellaneous loose sheets or drafts. You can browse the collection by period, correspondent, place, or limit your results to letters that contain sketches. Simple and advanced search features are also available. The website also contains a wealth of contextual essays, biographical information, and research tools including the publication history of van Gogh’s letters, a chronology, and detailed bibliographies of the individual letters. A few years ago, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam released an app called Yours, Vincent: The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, which contains digitized versions of van Gogh’s letters, sketches, and paintings as well as audio and video contextual clips.

Via ArtNews and the New York Times. For more information about van Gogh’s archival presence, visit Vincent van Gogh, The Letters or the Yours, Vincent app. You can always stop by the VRC to check it out, too!

Image: Vincent van Gogh. Self-portrait with a Straw Hat (verso: The Potato Peeler), probably 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 67.187.70a. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Categories
Modern - Contemporary Museums Renaissance - Baroque

The Art of the Sublime at the Tate

The Art of the Sublime is a research module that explores the concept of the sublime during several artistic movements, including the Baroque, the Romantic, the Victorian, and the modern. The project contains essays and case studies, illustrated by works of art from the Tate’s collection as well as literary examples. More about the project:

In 2008 Tate initiated a project to explore the history and current relevance of the sublime, particularly as reflected in Tate’s collection of historic and modern works of art. Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project embraced a range of activities and outputs, including an exhibition and display at Tate Britain, conferences and specially made films.

To explore the project, visit the Art of the Sublime.

Categories
Images on the Web Modern - Contemporary Photography

Lee Miller Archives

The Lee Miller Archives, located in East Sussex, England, is a privately run archive that maintains the legacy and career of the artist, including “60,000 negatives, mainly black and white, most of her manuscripts, captions, notes, letters and ephemeral material, her cameras, and some of her personal effects such as her US Army uniform.” Their website boasts an image collection of more than 3,000 of Lee Miller’s photographs, including final images as well as contact prints:

Following the exciting launch of our long-awaited online picture library over three thousand of Lee Miller’s photographs can now be seen together for the first time. Many of the images, converted from the original negatives or vintage prints into digital format, have not previously been in circulation and are a fascinating addition to the published work. All aspects of Lee’s remarkable career are represented, including her Surrealist images, World War II photo-journalism, 20th century fashion photography and celebrity portraiture!

Lee Miller was an icon of photography—both as a model and a photographer in her own right—beginning in the 1920s when she began modeling for Vogue staff photographers including Edward Steichen and George Hoyningen-Huene. She moved to Paris in 1929 and studied under Surrealist photographer Man Ray (the pair discovered the photographic technique of solarisation during this time), and soon after opened her own studio in New York. During World War II she served as a war photojournalist. After the war, her career remained closely tied to photography and the arts, and she died at the Farley Farm House in 1977, where the Lee Miller Archives is now located.

For more information, visit the Lee Miller Archives.