Leonardo da Vinci in Los Angeles

The Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles will host a short-run exhibition that features a rare showing of Leonardo’s drawing Angel in the Flesh (c. 1513-1515). Also included will be selections from Leonardo’s The Theatre Sheet (c. 1506-1508, from the Atlanticus Codex) and video artist Bill Viola’s installation The Last Angel (2002). Opening night, scholar Carlo Pedretti will discuss the installation and Leonardo’s works with Viola and will conclude with the screening of two short documentaries about the Renaissance artist. The exhibition will run December 2-12, 2009.

via Culture Monster (who also reminisces elsewhere about the Leonardo that got away…)

SAHARA and ARTstor

ARTstor has partnered with SAHARA (Society of Architectural Historians Architecture Resources Archive) to include  SAH members’  photography.   While much of this collection has only been available to SAH members, a large selection, called “Editor’s Choice” is now available to all ARTstor licensors.  The SAHARA collection in ARTstor now has nearly 9,000 images, and 72 new QTVRs.  The content ranges from ancient to modern architecture, and includes many sites around the globe.

Contributing institutions include MIT, Brown U, and the U of Virginia, as well as individual SAH members.  Like all ARTstor content, the SAHARA images are available for research and teaching.

To learn more, go to ARTstor -> Collections, and scroll down to SAHARA.

New Museum Exhibitions in SoCal

Lots of new things opening  – a few highlights:

New exhibitions at the Huntington include “The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection”, “Central Avenue and Beyond: The Harlem Renaissance in Los Angeles”,  “Drawn to Satire: John Sloan’s Illustrations for the Novels of Charles Paul de Kock”, and continuing  “British Watercolors of the Eastern Mediterranean”.

At LACMA, new exhibits include “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape”, “Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India’s Comics”, “Luis Melendez; Master of Spanish Still Life”, and “From Spoon to the City: Objects from Architects from LACMA’s Collection”

And closer to home at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, recently opened exhibits include “Noble Tombs at Mawangdui”, “Diana Thater: Butterflies and Other People”, and  “California Calling, Part II”.

Ingres at the Norton Simon

The Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena has announced that Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Comtesse d’Haussonville (1845) has arrived on loan from The Frick Collection in New York. The portrait, the first loan from the Frick in an art exchange program between the two institutions, will be exhibited October 30, 2009–January 25, 2010. The loan is also a starting point for the Museum’s exhibitions Gaze: Portraiture after Ingres (October 30, 2009–April 5, 2010) and The Familiar Face: Portrait Prints by Rembrandt (December 4, 2009–March 22, 2010).

For more about the painting, the exchange, and these future exhibitions, click here.

The Familiar Face: Portrait Prints by Rembrandt

Archivision Module 4 now available through ARTstor too

The architectural holdings available to us keep getting better!  The Archivision base collection, and modules 1 and 2, have been available in ARTstor to all UC campuses for a few months.  Module 4 is the group of 6,000 images that we’ve had available through MDID only (the license for which was won at the VRA raffle!).  Now ARTstor has “unlocked” Module 4 for the UCSB campus, so users can access these images through either ARTstor or MDID.

Alka Patel’s collection now available in ARTstor

Professor Alka Patel of UC Irvine has worked with ARTstor and UCI VRC staff to contribute over 7,000 of her field research images to the main ARTstor collection.   These include the art and architecture of South Asia and Cuba.  Read more about the content of this new addition here.

This is an important project for all to note as it a) illustrates collaboration between a scholar and ARTstor, b) shows how a partnership with the Visual Resources Collection can benefit all, and c) is an excellent example of how centralized collection building works.  Prof. Patel has contributed these images for all ARTstor users, as have other individual and institutional participants.

To explore these images, go to Browse by collection, and click “Alka Patel: South Asian and Cuban Art and Architecture;” or, Search using the keyword: alkapatel.

ARTMargins Journal on East European Visual Culture

ARTMargins is an online journal devoted to Contemporary  Central and East European Visual Culture.  Founded in 1999 and published three times a year, it is managed by staff at The Hungarian University of Fine Arts and University of California, Santa Barbara -  our own Sven Spieker is the Editor.  There are wonderfully diverse articles on art and exhibitions, books, film and video, and interviews with artists, writers, and more.

Art Historians of Southern California Annual meeting on Nov. 7

THE ART HISTORIANS of  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (AHSC)

November 7, 2009 at 9:00 am
Occidental College, Weingart Hall

Program includes lunch and reception.   RSVP for further information to Rachel Pinto at eaurae@gmail.com

Full program is available here.

Directions to Occidental College here.

The Virtual Museum of Iraq

Highlights from the The National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad can now be viewed online at The Virtual Museum of Iraq. The “halls” are organized by period and offer historical and geographical background as well as sculptures and decorative objects. Objects can be explored both by description and visually via multiple views or a QTVR. Some objects also have a short contextual video. [You must have the latest versions of Adobe Flash and Quicktime to view this site]

The Red Dot breaks 5,000!

We just passed 5,000 hits this morning – fantastic!  We at the Red Dot are very happy, and grateful for your continued readership!  If there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of, please let us know.

With gratitude,

Jackie and Christine