New moods of van Gogh revealed?

In preparation for a new exhibition of paintings by van Gogh and his contemporaries, Vincent van Gogh at Work , new color analyses of hundreds of his paintings, drawings, and notebooks have revealed that he may have been more methodical and less “mad” than previously thought.  In fact the director of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam says the studies show him to be “goal-oriented”.  This has mainly been argued through the color shift in the paint pigments he used, for example what now appear to be pale blue walls in The Bedroom of 1888 are thought to have been  lavender when freshly painted, which would have evoked a more tranquil mood.  Other scholars still believe that the colors he chose reflected his state of mind at various life stages.

Read the whole article in the NY Times here.

 

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.

NYT Review of The Artful Recluse

Previously at The Santa Barbara Museum of Art and currently at the Asia Society and Museum in New York, The Artful Recluse showcases almost 60 paintings from an era of unrivaled historical drama and artistic achievement in China that spans from the late Ming (ca. 1600–1644) and the early Qing dynasties (1644–ca.1700). The show, co-curated by Peter Sturman, Professor of History of Art and Architecture at UCSB, and Susan Tai, Elizabeth Atkins Curator of Asian Art at SBMA, was recently reviewed in the New York Times.

LACMA offers to absorb MOCA

The LA Times reports that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has put in an offer to take over both branches of the financially-struggling Museum of Contemporary Art. The offer letter, from LACMA Director Michael Govan and the two board co-chairs, was dated February 24 and in response to MOCA’s initial request for a merger of the institutions.

Read Michael Govan’s response to the LA Times article here and the final decision of the MOCA Board here.

Celebrating the Armory Show centenary

The International Exhibition of Modern Art was held at the 69th Infantry Regiment Armory in New York between February 17 – March 15, 1913 and made a deep and wide impact on American art and its viewing public. Some interesting websites on the exhibition’s 100th anniversary include:

• 1913 Armory Show: the Story in Primary Sources: a visual timeline from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, as seen through letters, meeting minutes, news articles, sales records, etc.
• Exhibitions:
  • The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913: at the Montclair Art Museum (February 17 – June 16, 2013), the first exhibition to focus primarily on the American artists represented in that show
  • The Armory Show at 100: information about an upcoming exhibition (October 11, 2013 – February 23, 2014) at the New-York Historical Society that will reassess the Show and its impact by bringing together 75 works of art and presenting an extensive catalogue of images and essays
• The Virtual Armory Show: a gallery-by-gallery textual and visual recreation of the exhibition, for a virtual museum created by by Shelley Staples for the (now disbanded) American Studies Group at the University of Virginia

Delacroix painting vandalized

Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830) has been defaced by a 28-year-old woman who wrote “AE911″ across a roughly foot-long section along the bottom. The painting has been in the Louvre-Lens since the satellite museum opened December. The tag refers to the 9/11 conspiracy website Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

via Reuters

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.