John Constable’s real Stour Valley

The Guardian is reporting that a UK National Trust land agent has traced the actual location for John Constable’s painting Stour Valley and Dedham Church. The agent, speaking here in this brief video, compares the group of trees on the right side of the painting to those in the valley.

Architecture and CGI

For a breathtaking look at one filmmaker’s visual dialogue with the built environment, check out the short film The Third & and The Seventh, a “FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art [sic] across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.”

Among the buildings featured in this 12-minute short are Santiago Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Museum expansion, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and Louis I. Kahn’s Phillips Exeter Academy Library. Make sure to watch it in HD and full screen and with sound.

LACMA launches Art Reading Room

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art now offers its first online Reading Room. This “room” holds ten rare exhibition catalogues, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s, of Southern California contemporary art.

For more information and upcoming projects, see Culture Monster.

The Big Picture – news and current events photo archive

The Big Picture, part of the Boston Globe online, is a massive archive of browsable and downloadable news photos.  The up-to-the-minute images are organized by month and by categories such as Middle East, Religion, Daily Life, Disasters, etc.  Each topic includes several photos, and in some cases (such as the post-Hurricane Ike group under “Disasters”) there are before and after photos which transform with a click.

Edward Burtynsky talk at USC, Jan. 28

If you are in LA this week you should try to attend “In the Wake of Progress: An Evening with Edward Burtynsky”.   It takes place Thursday, January 28,  7pm, at the Gin D. Wong FAIA Conference Center/ Auditorium, Harris Hall 101 at USC as part of the “Visions and Voices” program.   Admission is free.

Canadian photographer Burtynsky is an advocate for sustainable living practices.  The excellent documentary Manufactured Landscapes, based on his 2005 exhibition,  shows how he manages to find beauty amidst  industrial carnage.

You can read more about him and his work here.

New ARTstor collection announcements

ARTstor has announced the following are available in the Digital Library:

• Brooklyn Museum Costumes (The Metropolitan Museum of Art): 5,883 high resolution images of highlights from the Brooklyn Museum now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute (keywords: brooklyn costume)
• The Samuel H. Kress Collection and National Gallery of Art: 1,757 images from the Kress Collection, meant to “reassemble” a substantial portion of the collection prior to its dispersal among 90 institutions in 33 states (keyword: kressfoundation)
• Frick Art Reference Library Photoarchives: 6,000 additional images, completing the collection of roughly 25,000 photographs from the A.C. Cooper Archive, Sansoni Archive, and American Private Collections and Small Repository Archive (keywords: frick photoarchives OR frick cooper OR frick sansoni)
• The Warburg Institute: 860 additional images of Renaissance and Baroque book illustrations (now 22% complete of what will be a total 10,000 images; keywords: warburg institute library)

The The Trout Gallery at Dickinson College has also reached an agreement with ARTstor to contribute approximately 6,000 images of works in its permanent collection, which is strong in American and European prints from the 19th through 20th centuries, photography, West African sculpture, Asian art, and Native American and Oceanic objects.

Fine Art Study Break

When you find yourself with a moment to spare (or are in need of a quick break from the task at hand), check out the blog That Is Priceless by comedy writer Steve Melcher, who daily offers his “slightly funnier” take on the subject matter in various works of art.

Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s “Historic Cities”

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of Geography and The Jewish National and University Library offer a fantastic website dedicated to “maps, literature, documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present and future of historic cities”. The site is searchable by area, mapmaker or year, and each image can be viewed in high resolution [click the map above to see an example].

“Soundsuit” exhibition at the Fowler Museum

A fantastic exhibit is opening this weekend at the Fowler Museum at UCLA (Jan. 10 to May 30).   Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth includes 35 multimedia costumes/soundsuits designed by artist/dancer/costume designer Nick Cave (not the Australian singer!).   We saw this show in San Francisco and it’s really terrific.  You can read more about the artist and see photos of some of the costumes here.

LA Arts Month starts

LA Arts Month kicks off this week.  There’s a packed schedule of special film screenings, lectures, dance and music performances, gallery openings, workshops, and more.  To read more and see the schedule of events, go to their site.

image at right is from LACMA’s “HEROES & VILLAINS: The Battle for Good in Indian’s Comics”