Visiting the Art and Art History Masters’ shows will improve your health

A recent study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health concluded that men who participate in cultural activities, such as visiting museums and attending the ballet, are happier and healthier. Finally, it pays to be artsy.

And with perfect timing, our Art History and Art Studio Masters candidates are here to help you along your path to well-being. This week, the Art History Program will hold its annual MA candidate symposium, Constructing Identity: Image and Ownership, this Friday, May 27 from 1:30 to 5 pm in Art 217. Boghan Damian, Andrea Lesovsky, Graham McLean, Brittany McKinney, Melissa Gustin, Kristen Koch, Crystal Fountain and Nick Nabas will present their final thesis research.

The following Friday, June 3 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm marks the opening of the Art Studio MFA thesis exhibition, The House of Other at the Richard L Nelson Gallery. The show will feature the work of Jen Cohen, Lisa Rybovich Cralle, Manuel Fernando Rios, Matthew Taylor, Paul Taylor and Mathew Zefeldt.

Congratulations to our 2011 MA and MFA graduates! Both events are free and open to the public and are guaranteed to increase your fitness levels and maybe even turn-around a bad hair day. (source: msnbc.com, May 23, 2011)

UC Davis Film Festival returns

The Davis Varsity Theatre will host this year’s UC Davis Film Festival on Wednesday and Thursday, May 25–26, at 8:30 p.m. The festival, produced by Theatre and Dance, Technocultural Studies and Film Studies, and Art Studio, gives students the opportunity to present their short films and receive feedback from faculty who are professionals in film, television, and new media.   When asked what drew them to the festival, many past and current participants noted the opportunity to see their work on the ‘big screen,’ as well as the chance to engage with UC Davis faculty in the arts. Via a pre-submission schedule, students are offered constructive criticism and help with how to take their work to the next level. In addition to student producer Pamela Orebaugh, the festival is directed by three UC Davis faculty producers: Professors Sarah Pia Anderson and John Iacovelli, Department of Theatre and Dance, and Professor Jesse Drew, Technocultural Studies. The faculty producers serve as advisors along with other UC Davis faculty: Jaimey Fisher, Film Studies and German; Darrin Martin, Art Studio; Maggie Morgan, Theatre and Dance; Pablo Ortiz, Music; and Julie Wyman, Technocultural Studies. To read more about the festival, go here; to view past years’ winning films, go here.

Tickets are $7 and $10 and will be available at the Davis Varsity Theatre box office starting May 18.

What does a Digital Public Library of America look like?

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Steering Committee wants your help developing a national digital public library. To facilitate this goal, the DPLA has released Beta Sprint, an initiative that “seeks, ideas, models, prototypes, technical tools, user interfaces, etc.—put forth as a written statement, a visual display, code, or a combination of forms—that demonstrate how the DPLA might index and provide access to a wide range of broadly distributed content.” Beta Sprint is where theory merges with reality, or as Doron Weber, Steering Committee member and Vice President of the Sloan Foundation, put it, “where the dream of a seamless and comprehensive digital library for every person begins to grapple, technically and creatively, with what has already been accomplished and what still needs to be developed.” Anyone interested in participating must submit a Statement of Interest by June 15.
For more information on the Digital Public Library of America, go to their wiki.
(sources: Beta Sprint Press Release, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard)

Keith Aoki, UCD professor and public domain crusader, 1955-2011

Keith Aoki, the Professor of Law from UCD’s King Hall who was known for his ability to turn “his artistic talents into a powerful tool for battling overzealous copyright laws,” died this past April at the age of 55. Professor Aoki earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in fine art and drew underground cartoons in New York City before enrolling at Harvard Law School. After graduating, Mr. Aoki practiced law, focusing on technology law, for 2 years in Boston before moving on to a teaching career at the University of Oregon and UC Davis. Mr. Aoki was a strident and creative defender of digital freedom. He is known for his briefs defending the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation and Bound by Law? Tales From the Public Domain (Duke U. Press, 2006), a cartoon he wrote and illustrated about a documentary filmmaker confronting copyright restrictions as she attempts to make a film.

The UCD School of Law is conducting a memorial for Aoki — “Remembering Keith Aoki” — on May 26 at 3:00 pm in King Hall. Additional tributes on Professor Aoki: the School of Law at UC Davis, The Public Domain and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

New resources at Shields Library

Our always helpful librarian at Shields Library, Dan Goldstein, emailed us a list of books just added to the Harvest catalog. Here are a few highlights:
The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum : archaeology, reception, and digital reconstruction (Shields Library DG70.H5 V56 2010); The art of tomorrow (N6497 .A78 2010); The vorticists : manifesto for a modern world (N6768.5.V6 V678 2010); Forced journeys : artists in exile in Britain c.1933-45 (N6768 .F68 2009); Undercurrents : experimental ecosystems in recent art (N6498.E26 U54 2010); Abitare : 50 years of design : the best of architecture, interiors, fashion, travel, trends (NK1390 .A25 2010); Stephen Gill, Coming up for air (TR655 .G57 2010); Ivan Vartanian, See/Saw : connections between Japanese art then and now (N7350 .V37 2011); Contemporary art in Asia : a critical reader (N7260 .C627 2011); Mazaar, Bazaar : design and visual culture in Pakistan (NC998.6.P18 M38 2009); Atlas of world interior design (NK1990 .A85 2011); Russell Abraham, California cool : residential modernism reborn (NA7235.C2 A37 2010); Representing slavery : art, artefacts and archives in the collections of the National Maritime Museum (HT985 .R46 2007); Art and phenomenology (N70 .A775 2011); Holger Hoock, Empires of the imagination : politics, war and the arts in the British world, 1750-1850 (DA485 .H66 2010); Kathleen Ashley, Being a pilgrim : art and ritual on the medieval routes to Santiago; Ansel Adams, Unseen Ansel Adams : photographs from the Fiat Lux Collection (TR655 .A323 2010).

AND please take a look at Dan’s “Digital Images” finding aids site. It’s full of really helpful links to licensed and freely available image resources for students and scholars working in the humanities. This is a great campus resource.

Jacques Seligmann & Co. records online

Jacques Seligmann & Co. was a leading dealer in the antiquities and decorative arts market in Paris during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The company played a critical role in the development of art collecting and consequently the growth of numerous major European and American galleries and museums. Seligmann’s clients are a who’s who of big collectors in Europe and the U.S.:  Baron Edmond de Rothschild of France, the Stronganoff family of Russia, William Randolph Hearst and J. P. Morgan of the United States, just to name a few.

This past April, the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute announced the availability of the Jacques Seligmann & Co. archive online.  The records — over 200 linear square feet of material dating from 1904 to 1978 — include catalogs, photographs, receipts, publicity, and correspondence and amount to 330,749 available images/digital records.

New web portal for recovery of Nazi-era cultural property

Thanks to the collaborative efforts of several archival institutions and the Holocaust International Resources, a new web portal designed to assist the public access records and information debuted last week. The International Research Portal consolidates access to several collections, among them the Bundesarchiv, the Commission for Looted Art and the US National Archives and Records Administration, linking “researchers to archival material consisting of descriptions of records and, in many cases, digital images of the records that relate to cultural property that was stolen, looted, seized, forcibly sold, or otherwise lost during the Nazi-era.” The property documented ranges from artworks, religious objects, archival documents and libraries.

Discover Yale Digital Commons

Yale University has announced that they will provide free access to the millions of items housed in their museums, archives and libraries through their newly developed catalog Yale Digital Commons or YDA. So far, Yale has digitized slightly over 250,000 of its 1.5 million items. Yale’s collections are broad ranging and deep — from vertebrate zoology to hand-written Mozart compositions. Users can search by institution (the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Art Gallery, Library and Center for British Art), by creator, document type (ie. animals, coins, prints), topics (ie. landscape, Tanzania), era and more. Yale is the first of the Ivy Leagues to make its collections freely available and it hopes this approach will encourage scholars to look to their collections for inspiration. At this point, Yale is not placing any limitations on use of the digital images YDA makes available.

Prehistoric cave paintings discovered in Spain

Archaeologists, looking for ancient settlements, chanced upon 25,000 year old cave paintings a few weeks ago in a northern Spain. The seriously deteriorated paintings depict horses and human hands. Exploration of the site continues. (source: Reuters, May 4, 2011)

Early Soviet films on YouTube

Are you a fan of Soviet cinema? Well now you have a chance to watch some classic works produced by the production company giant Mosfilm on YouTube (www.youtube.com/mosfilm).  In an attempt to prevent illegal uploads of their films, Mosfilm has released 50 titles and will continue to upload 5 additional titles each week until they have streamed over 200 of their classic film. Most videos are subtitled in English with Cryllic titles.  Mosfilm has uploaded some of their classics but also musicals, fantasies, action and adventure flicks. (source: Wall Street Journal,  May 10, 2011)