University of California-Santa Barbara’s Visual Resource Collection Image News
Accessceramics.org is a collaborative database project which allows users to contribute images of contemporary ceramics for educational purposes. It was started by Ted Vogel and Margo Ballantyne at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, and it uses Flickr image software to upload, organize and display the images. It can be browsed by artist name, media, technique or object type.
The innovation of this project was recently recognized through the receipt of an NEA grant.
Make it Digital: This new site, provided by the New Zealand government, includes loads of helpful hints and answers to difficult questions about how to digitize (technically, legally, aesthetically).
The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, housed in the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, is now online and accessible to the public. This rare collection includes roughly 7,610 photographs, 230 glass lantern slides, and various additional materials from 1860 to 1960.
The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz announced a new online exhibition on The Cloister of Monreale. The exhibition offers general views of the cloister but it’s the extensive details of the capitals that make it worth seeing.
Clicking on each detail opens a bit bigger image, but to get an even better view, follow the “full-size” link beneath that image (the full size is on average 1024 x 768; for example, here is the large image of the thumbnail above).
The Institut also has a gallery of past online exhibitions (such as images from the Flood of 1966 and the Assisi earthquake of 1997).
After years of planning, and decades of debate, The New Acropolis Museum opened its doors on Saturday. The concrete and glass museum, designed by Bernard Tschumi, stands near the foot of the Acropolis and offers a view of the Parthenon — a visual argument by the Greek government that the Parthenon sculptures (previously known as the “Elgin Marbles”) now in The British Museum should be returned permanently to Athens. The British Museum had offered a short-term loan of the sculptures for the opening but it was rejected.
The opening has naturally reawakened this debate. Here is a sampling of recent articles, essays and posts in Vanity Fair, Telegraph, The New York Times, the blog Elginism, and of course The British Museum and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.
via The New York Times (and NYT Slideshow).
A Peter Paul Rubens etching lost to scholars for over 170 years has been rediscovered in Rome. The work was based on Leonardo’s Last Supper and is believed to be one of the few etchings made by the artist himself.
via ansa.it [Note: link now restricts access]
The LA Times reported last Friday that the Long Beach Museum of Art appears to be in dire financial straits due to a $3-million bond debt due to the city in September. The city is threatening a takeover of the museum and to sell works of art to cover the debt. To address this issue, the museum provides a memo from the Executive Director and a Fact Sheet (both pdf).
It seems ARTstor has been very busy lately. Two agreements have been reached with the following organizations:
Besides the newly-acquired images from the Archivision Library, the ARTstor Digital Library now contains these works from:
Eastman Kodak’s Blog 1000words posted an announcement today that they will “retire” Kodachrome slide film. Additional information can be found here.
For those who love slide photography, or are old enough to have memories of family vacation slide shows (embarrassing or otherwise), this is a sad end of an era. To put a bit of salt in the wound, the Kodak website has a “Great Moments” Kodachrome Slideshow to show you what you’ll miss.
If you’re in Los Angeles tonight, don’t miss The American Magic Lantern Theater‘s show at the UCLA Hammer Museum, 7pm. The show, inspired by the Hammer exhibition The Darker Side of Light, is a “Victorian era Magic-Lantern show, replete with flying ghosts, macabre goblins, and a petrifying rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. Using original glass slides and a spectacular antique Magic-Lantern, the AMLT re-creates this popular 1890’s combination of projected color images, dramatic storytelling, live music, hilarious comedy, and frightening special effects.”
