Resnick Pavilion opens at LACMA

The Renzo Piano-designed pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will open to the public on October 2.  Funded mainly from a $45 million gift from the philanthropists Stewart and Lynda Resnick, the 45,000 square foot space opens with three exhibitions:  1. Sculptures and vessels from Mesoamerican antiquity; 2.  Two hundred years of aristocratic clothing; and 3.  a selection of works from the Resnicks’ collection with a focus on French Rococo.  Read more about the inaugural shows in this LA Times Review.  And the review of the architecture here.

And finally, here is a cool interactive graphic of the whole LACMA campus.

Museum Day: Saturday, September 25

Smithsonian Magazine is celebrating their 6th Annual Museum Day. On Saturday, September 25, museums all over the country will offer free admission to those with special Museum Day tickets. Locally, this includes the Presidio and Casa de la Guerra but you can search for all participating venues here. Once you’ve found your choice, print your ticket (good for two people at one venue) here.

Fisk University and Georgia O’Keeffe, continued

We mentioned last week that Fisk University in Nashville, in trying to alleviate financial woes, is attempting to use its Stieglitz Collection in revenue-generating ventures.

In response, Fisk alumni and students are planning an on-campus vigil this evening to protest any removal of the Collection from university grounds. Meanwhile, the University is protesting a proposal by Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper to move the Collection off campus but have it remain in Nashville.

UPDATE (9/15/2010): Judge rejects Cooper’s proposal

Explaining and exploring photographic processes

If students are having a hard time distinguishing their autochrome from their photogram, here are three fantastic on-line resources that offer definitions and examples of photographic processes:

• Historic Photographs, from the British Library, is an on-line gallery tour of photography “in its formative years.”

• Exploring Photography, from the Victoria & Albert Museum, has a series of links to each process (from the beginning through digital) and various works from the V&A collection that illustrate each definition.

• digitalsamplebook.com‘s Graphic Atlas, hosted by the Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology, is a more technical exploration of photographic (including pre-photographic) processes, and offers a virtual study collection tour and the ability to identify and compare processes using views made with various lighting techniques and magnifications.

Fisk University and Georgia O’Keeffe

We’ve reported in the past here and here (and more recently here) about Brandeis University’s attempts to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its permanent collection to help alleviate the university’s budget problems.

Well, another university is in the news for similar actions. Fisk University in Nashville has been trying to sell works from, and then sell a half-share in, the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, a 101-piece collection of photographs, paintings and sculptures donated by Georgia O’Keeffe to the university in 1949.

via Culture Monster

Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Library of Images From the Environment

LIFE (Library of Images From the Environment) database contains over 28000 high-resolution images from nature, including views of landscapes, plant and animal examples, as well as broader environmental issues like management and research. Hosted by the National Biological Information Infrastructure and the Center for Biological Informatics, the site is organized by subject (each with extensive sub-headings) and contains images from around the globe.

MEGA – a new database of Middle Eastern antiquities

After four years of collaboration and hard work, MEGA  (Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities) will launch next month.  It was designed to inventory archaeological sites so conservators and archaeologists can monitor and preserve them more easily.  It was developed at the Getty Conservation Institute, with funding aid from the World Monuments Fund and in partnership with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities.

It was originally intended as a catalogue of Iraq’s antiquities, which was particularly important in light of the looting the took place during and after the invasion (and which has apparently heated up again); however the chaos there caused the plans to be shelved and Jordan stepped in as the primary partner.  According to this  NY Times article both the Getty and the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage in Iraq hope to expand MEGA to add Iraq’s materials.

It’s not clear if the database will be made available to a wider audience in the future – it would certainly be a valuable asset in other areas of teaching and research.