The “art” of reproduction

For those of you who use web searches extensively for your lectures or presentations, check out the post “The Art Of Reproduction” on the blog Visual Hint — the color of data:

“Type “Danae Klimt” into your favorite search engine, and you conjure up a high-resolution image of Gustav Klimt’s Danaë: tan limbs, a shower of gold, red hair.”

“Or did you find pink limbs? Or were they gray or even green? There’s the rub: the seemingly perfect museum holds dozens of Danaës—with dozens of different palettes. Even the shape changes as reproductions are subtly cropped.”

“Curious just how far reproductions stray from each other, we began an investigation. (Go directly to the results if you like.) For a set of famous artworks, we downloaded all the plausible copies we could find. Then we wrote software to reconstruct each artwork as a mosaic, a patchwork quilt where each patch comes from an individual copy.”

hat tip: Nancy Alexander

LACMA website now offers downloadable images

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has retooled their online collection to include nearly 20,000 high-resolution images of artworks it “believes to be in the public domain”.  Those images known to be otherwise protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights must be requested. For more information on using of LACMA’s digital images, consult the museum’s Terms of Use.

The Public Domain Review

Ever wonder how you can efficiently find texts and visual media in the public domain? One helpful source is The Public Domain Review, a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation “dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online.” Browse the site’s articles or collections by media type and sign up to receive a bi-monthly newsletter in your inbox with featured highlights. The Review cites who’s responsible for making the works available and where to find them.

For those interested in the history of the Open Knowledge movement, click here for a concise visual timeline.

US Holocaust Museum’s digital collection

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s digital collection — so far, that’s 217,630 records — is available to search online. There are some useful searching tips on the online collection homepage or try browsing within the three set “facets”: record type (e.g., oral history, photograph, document), language, or special collection. Other special features include links to over 3,800 streamable oral history testimonies (roughly 7,600 total hours), downloadable finding aids to over 8,200 archival collections, and over 4,500 films. There is also a link at the bottom of every record, should you need it, to ask a reference question. For more information on searching the collections, click here.

A digital collection highlighting Schinkel’s creativity

The Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz now hosts an online catalogue of their significant collection of drawings, watercolors, gouaches and prints by the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841). The project, Das Erbe Schinkels (Schinkel’s Legacy) contains almost 6,500 entries. Users can search either in English or German, including Iconclass and bibliography keywords. The project, developed in part with the exhibition Karl Friedrich Schinkel. History and Poetry (7 September 2012 – 6 January 2013 at Kupferstichkabinett im Kulturforum, Berlin), also aims to fit works within both a timeline of Schinkel’s artistic techniques and preferred materials as well as the broader issue of long-term user access.

Update: BBC’s Your Paintings completes access to UK’s public-owned paintings; taggers now welcome

Eighteen months ago we announced the launch of Your Paintings, a BBC-hosted site “which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real.” The site, co-funded by The Public Catalogue Foundation, announced it has completed its task. This translates into 3,217 participating venues and 211,861 paintings that are available online.

Now, the BBC and PCF are asking the public to help them tag the paintings.

Rembrandt Database offers a rich research resource

The Rembrandt Database is dedicated to gathering and presenting past and current scholarship (with their sources) about the 17th-century Netherlandish artist. Still in beta, the goal of the site is to foster “a platform for the presentation of new interpretations” through a collaborative effort between numerous museums, research institutions and individual scholars worldwide. Currently there are twelve paintings available, but the accompanying documentation for them exceeds over 1,000 records with a strong emphasis in technical analysis and conservation history. Visit often, as the site plans to expand both the number of paintings and participating institutions.

Rijksmuseum launches its collection digitally in Rijksstudio

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam now offers RijksStudio, a vast and ground-breaking online presentation of 125,000 works in its collection. The site, which is a “prelude” to the physical museum’s reopening April 13, 2013, contains high resolution images with which users “can do whatever they like”: create your own printed creations or collect and share image sets. If you’re bored merely searching or browsing the collection, try the Master Matcher, which creates sets based on selected criteria groups like cities, character types and colors. All these projects can be created only when you register for your own “studio.”

Courtauld hosts Gothic Ivories Project

The Courtauld Institute of Art has launched the Gothic Ivories Project, an online database of over 2800 images of ivory sculptures made in Western Europe between ca. 1200-ca. 1530 (with some neo-Gothic pieces as well). Search specifics, browse works by keyword, location and type, or visit the informational pages for site tips and tools. Additionally, when you become a registered user you can create private or public image folders of your favorite works. Many objects have multiple views and extensive entries.

Second Fall IRC workshop on Nov. 2

The second workshop offered through the IRC will take place on Friday, November 2, 3-4pm in Ellison 1811.  The topic is “Maximizing Online Image Resources & New Image Technology”, led by Jackie Spafford.  All are welcome.

This workshop will cover overviews of:

• image size and resolution, and best downloading protocol
• ARTstor’s growing collection and its newest features
• other rich online resources such as MDID, Flickr, SAHARA, Google Art Project, and various museum and library collections
• ways to optimize image searches using tools such as Reverse Image Searching and ways to optimize storage using tools such as Zotero

Please send any special topic requests for this workshop to Jackie:
spafford@hfa.ucsb.edu