Denver Art Museum Joins Google Art Project

I was pleased to see this morning that the Denver Art Museum has joined the Google Art Project. You can zoom your way into those glorious details of 162 works by 125 artists from the DAM's permanent collections.

Over 150 museums currently participate in Google Art Project, which now has a YouTube channel featuring some nice videos on how to use the site, behind the scenes footage, and more. If you haven't been to Google Art Project yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. With beautiful art, gorgeous images, and the ability to explore museums that you might not otherwise have the opportunity to visit, you won't be disappointed.

Expansion of Google Art Project Announced

Today the Google blog announced a major expansion of content available in the Google Art Project. A little over a year ago the VRC reported the launch of this resource. I noted then that while its scope was relatively small -- with only 1,000 images from 17 museums -- the Art Project had the potential to become an incredible resource over time. I am pleased to see that the Art Project now includes more than 30,000 high-resolution artworks. These represent a more diverse cultural range that includes sculpture, street art and photographs from 151 museums in 40 countries. There are currently Street View images for 46 museums, with more on the way.

In addition to more images, some other new elements include:

• New tools, called Explore and Discover, let you find images by period, artist, or artwork type.
• Integration of Google+ and Hangouts on the site.
• Better quality of Street View images.
• 46 artworks are now available in super high "gigapixel" resolution.
• The My Gallery feature, which allows you to build, annotate, and share personalized galleries.

 Want to know more about the Google Art Project. The FAQs page is a great place to start. Have fun exploring!

Historical Medical Images Online

A graduate student recently asked me about where she might find historical medical images online. I am posting these resources here because this is a recurring topic of interest among faculty and students in both art history and studio arts. Do you have other suggestions? Please share them with us.

Wellcome Images
Over 40,000 current and historical medical images; "Wellcome Images is one of the world's richest and most unique collections, with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science." Explore Wellcome images here.

Images from the History of Medicine (IHM)
"Provides access to nearly 70,000 images in the collections of the History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the U.S National Library of Medicine (NLM)." Search for IHM images here.

Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration (New York Public Library)
"Hundreds of images from the thirteenth through the early twentieth century, in the fields of astronomy, chemistry, geology, mathematics, medicine, and physics, as represented by manuscript illuminations, engravings, lithographs, and photographs." Discover Pictures of Science images from the NYPL Digital Gallery here.

Historical Medical Poster Collection (Yale's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library)
"The collection ranges from large size posters meant to be pasted on the sides of buildings and viewed from afar to small glossy placards designed for store windows...The collection focuses primarily on public health communications, but also has examples of medical product advertising, recruiting, and aid and relief solicitations." Find images from the Historical Medical Poster Collection here.

Image: Clemente Susini, Wax anatomical figure of reclining woman, 1771-1800, Florence.Science Museum, London, Wellcome Image. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.

Google Art Project: 'Street View' for Museums Plus Artworks in High Resolution

Today Google announced the launch of Google Art Project, an exciting development for anyone interested in art or art museums. From the Official Google Blog: "You’ll find a selection of super high-resolution images of famous works of art as well as more than a thousand other images, by more than 400 artists—all in one place. And with Street View technology, you can take a virtual tour inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums."

To get started,  just choose a museum from the home page and then select ‘View Artwork’ or ‘Explore the Museum'. From there you can use the drop-down menus at the upper left of the page to select a museum (box on left) or choose among the artworks within a given museum (box on right). You can virtually explore selected portions of museum spaces in 'Street View' mode with the ‘Explore the Museum' option -- note that the resolution in this mode is not particularly high. But in the ‘View Artwork’ mode you can zoom into lovely detail views, and even enjoy truly magnificent, super-high resolution, gigapixel details among selected images (indicated by a 'plus' symbol on the list of artworks).

Note the 'i' button at the top right of the page, which provides valuable information about the selected museum (Web site, floor plan, Google Maps location, museum history, and more works in the museum) or the selected artwork (such as viewing notes, additional artwork information, artwork history, tags, artist information, more works by the artist, and more works in the museum).

Finally, you can also ‘Create an Artwork Collection,’ where you can save and share specific views and comments on any of the 1000+ artworks included in Google Art Project. Note that FAQs can be found here.

The participating museums currently are:

• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
• Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
• The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
• MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
• Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
• Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
• Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
• National Gallery, London - UK
• Palace of Versailles - France
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
• The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
• State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
• Tate Britain, London - UK
• Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

While it current state is impressive, the relatively small number of museums and artworks is immediately obvious. It is exciting to imagine what this could become in time, with more contributions from these and other institutions around the world. While you can't beat viewing artworks in person, it is not possible for most of us to visit all of the museums that pique our interest. Further collaboration between Google and museums will make more cultural objects accessible to many more people, which will ideally inspire more museum visits and overall support for museums.

MoMA's Flickr Photostream: Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present

Until recently I was unaware that the Museum of Modern Art has a Flickr photostream.  Then I found myself there, completely rapt, poring over Marco Anelli's portraits of audience members taken as they sat with Marina Abramović at her epic performance, The Artist is Present.  These powerful images convey the intensity of this experience, which moves many participants to tears.  As you can see from the images, this grueling experience also has brought Abramović to tears on more than one occasion.  Today is the last day that Abramović will perform at the MoMA, where for six days a week since March 14th she has been seated on a wooden chair for more than seven hours a day with no breaks whatsoever.  I look forward to reading about her account of the experience after it's over.

The majority of visitors are members of the public at large (a fascinating variety of people), but Abramović's performance has also brought visits from many art world luminaries, as well as famous musicians, actors, and writers.  It's fun to play "spot the celebrity" -- sprinkled throughout the Flickr set of over a thousand photos you will find images of Antony Gormley, Lou Reed, Isabella Rossellini, Matthew Barney, Christiane Amanpour, Rufus Wainwright, Sean Kelly, Sharon Stone, Tehching Hsieh, Andre Serrano, Kim Catrall, Joan Jonas, Marisa Tomei, Björk, and many others.  Because I'm sentimental, my personal favorite is Ulay, who showed up to sit with Abramović at the opening reception.  This is the first time the former couple have “performed” together since their final piece in 1988, where they each walked over 1,200 miles from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China and met in the middle to bid each other farewell.

Quite honestly, there is not a lot of prior content that would have drawn me and many others to the MoMA's Flickr photostream.  I hope the success of this series will encourage them to share more exhibition images with us in the future.

Not coincidentally, the VRC has recently added a number of images documenting Abramović's body of work beginning in the 1970s.  These images are available to all faculty and students at the University of Colorado -- see our Web site for information about accessing our collection.

Image: animalvegetable, Marina Abramovic / The Artist is Present (detail), 2010, available from Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Every Van Gogh Letter Now Available Online

All 902 surviving letters to and from Vincent van Gogh are now available in a database online at Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. This incredible resource is the result of a collaboration over many years between the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute. In addition to keyword and advanced searches, one can browse by period, correspondent, place, or by those letters which include sketches. The page for each letter includes two columns, each containing the same set of information for easy comparisons: tabs with the original text transcribed; the option to view the text with numbered line endings; a facsimile with a link to detailed information about its physical description; an English translation; scholarly notes; and artworks by Van Gogh and others referred to within that letter. Clicking on the facsimile opens a viewer window where one can zoom into close detail on each folio.

The powerful advanced search feature allows you to search by some predictable parameters such as date, correspondent, and location. It also provides the opportunity to search by person, literature, work of art, and bible reference mentioned in the letters -- entering the first three letters of a search term prompts a list to appear from which you can select your search term.

The site contains a large amount of contextual information, with biographical and historical backgrounds, a chronology, concordance, bibliography, glossary, maps, and much more. Those wishing to make the most of this resource will want to spend a few minutes with the very useful Quick guide. Anyone with an interest in Van Gogh or digital libraries will be impressed and inspired by this site, which was launched in conjunction with the exhibition Van Gogh's Letters: The Artist Speaks. Kudos to the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute!

ArtBabble: Online Videos About Art

If you are looking for online video content about art, be sure to check out ArtBabble. Launched earlier this spring by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, ArtBabble is "intended to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives."

Now partnering with IMA is Art21, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the New York Public Library. IMA intends to continue adding content from these and other institutions, hoping that it will become an online destination for videos about art.

Videos on the Web site may be found by keyword searching or by browsing different categories. The "Series" tab includes Shaping the New Century: An International Design Symposium, Behind the Scenes at MoMA, Art21--Exclusive, NYPL: Design by the Book, Roman Art from the Louvre Webisodes, and more. The "Channels" tab contains alphabetically arranged keywords for finding content on the site, each of which is accompanied by the number of relevant videos in parentheses. Examples include Ancient Art (17), Ceramics (4), Contemporary Art (93), Exhibitions (51), Film (5), Painting (10), Talks (23), and Video Art (4). The "Artists" tab contains a list of over 150 artists currently represented by videos on the site. This includes contemporary artists, such as Lita Albuquerque, Dawoud Bey, Chuck Close, Ann Hamilton, Jenny Holzer, Alex Katz, William Kentridge, Kerry James Marshall, Pipilotti Rist, Jessica Stockholder, and Richard Tuttle. It also includes some historical figures, such as Georges Braque, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Gauguin, and Piet Mondrian. The "Partners" tab enables browsing by the project partners listed above.

More on Images for Academic Publishing

ARTstor continues to expand the Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) service. The recent addition of 1,700 images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art brings the number of images to over 3,300. IAP "seeks to facilitate scholarship in the arts by reducing the costs associated with publishing images in academic journals and similar publications. Image providers participating in IAP have supplied publication-quality images and agreed to make them available free-of-charge for use in scholarly publications. As a service to the community, ARTstor has developed the software to deliver these publication-quality images to users." Scholars affiliated with ARTstor participating institutions may access the IAP images within the ARTstor digital library by entering "IAP" in their search terms. Those working on a specific publication project but who are unaffiliated with an ARTstor participating institution may register for access to IAP. See ARTstor's IAP web page for more information. With initial content provided by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ARTstor expects that the IAP program will include content from multiple sources.

This is an encouraging development in the context of the recent dialog about images for scholarly research and publication, as well the role of museums as gatekeepers controlling access to images. Kenneth Hamma's 2005 article, "Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility," analyzes the benefits that museums would realize by providing broader access to images of works in their collections. Hilary Ballon and Mariet Westermann's 2006 report, "Art History and Its Publications in the Electronic Age," recommends organizing "a campaign to break down barriers to access and distribution of images, in all media and at affordable prices, for scholarly research and publication." Perhaps, along with the Victoria and Albert Museum's decision late in 2006 to drop reproduction fees for scholarly books and journals, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's move represents the beginnings of a culture shift within the museum community.

Image: "Wang Hui and Wang Shimin: Landscapes after Ancient Masters (1989.141.4)". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/qing_1/ho_1989.141.4.htm (October 2006)