15th Annual Sacramento Museum Day

The 15th Annual Sacramento Museum Day will take place this February 2nd (Saturday). Thirty Sacramento area museums will be participating with twenty-eight of the museums offering free admission for this event. Museum Day, a Sacramento cultural tradition, invites all members of the community to experience the Capital City’s incredible wealth of art, history, science and wildlife at numerous participating museums at no cost. Event hours are 10 am to 5 pm (with the last guests admitted at 4 pm).

Participating museums include: Aerospace Museum of California, California Automobile Museum, California Foundry History Museum, The California Museum, California State Military Museum, California State Capitol Museum, California State Railroad Museum, Ceter for Contemporary Art, Crocker Art Museum, Discovery Museum Science and Space Center, The Don and June Salvatori, California Pharmacy Museum, Fairytale Town, Folsom History Museum, Governor’s Mansion State Historic Park, Heidrick Ag History Center (Woodland), Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park, Maidu Museum and Historic Site, Museum of Medical History, Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum, Old Sacramento State Historic, Park, Roseville Utility Exploration Center, Sacramento Zoo, Sacramento Historic City Cemetery, Sacramento History Museum, Sojourner Truth Multicultural Arts Museum, State Indian Museum, Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park, and Wells Fargo History Museum (Old Sacramento and Downtown locations).

Rijks Studio launched

In anticipation of its reopening on April 13, 2013, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam launched Rijks Studio, their new online presentation of 125,000 works in its collection.
“Rijks Studio invites members of the public to create their own masterpieces by downloading images of artworks or details of artworks in the collection and using them in a creative way. The ultra high-resolution images of works, both famous and less well-known, can be freely downloaded, zoomed in on, shared, added to personal ‘studios’, or manipulated copyright-free. Users can have prints made of entire works of art or details from them. Other suggestions for the use of images include creating material to upholster furniture or wallpaper, or to decorate a car or an iPad cover for example. To celebrate this digital milestone, the Rijksmuseum is asking leading international artists, designers and architects to become pioneers of Rijks Studio by selecting one work from the collection and using it creatively to create a new artwork. These will be released in the run up to the reopening of the museum.” (Press release)

MetPublications

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has provided online access to their extensive publishing program through a newly developed resource called MetPublications. This portal currently provides access to 650 titles published from 1964 to the present but their goal is to make their entire list of publications — books, Bulletins and Journals published since 1870 — available online.  Current titles that are in-print may be previewed and search online with links to purchase the item. Almost all other titles may be read online, searched or downloaded as a PDF through the Google Books program.
Also available on MetPublication is their very useful Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, an online chronological, geographical and thematic exploration of global art history.
You can read more about the program here.

New Rembrandt resource

Users of the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) will be happy to know that there is a new resource available to Rembrandt scholars. The Rembrandt Database is an inter-institutional research resource for information and documentation on paintings by Rembrandt – or attributed to him, either now or in the past – in museums around the world.  This new resource consolidates all the various documentation on Rembrandt into one site with the aim of becoming the first port of call for research on Rembrandt’s paintings.  Over 20 institutions partnered with the primary sponsors RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) and the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in developing the Rembrandt Database. The developers eventually hope to include the body of information and documentation collected by the RRP into the Rembrandt Database.
The website currently contains 1700 digital documents (visual and textual material) relating to 12 paintings in 3 different museums. This number will grow in the coming period with the number of contributing museums is expected to reach 20 by 2014.

Goya at the Prado online

The Museo del Prado has launched a new site devoted to its extensive collection of Goya works and documents. The site, called Goya en el Prado, provides more than 1,000 digital images of paintings, prints, drawings and documents by the artist from the Prado’s collection. Goya in the Prado will be regularly updated with new information making it a primary reference point for those interested in Goya. The site offers rigorous technical and historical information, a comprehensive bibliographical section and high resolution images. The site is in Spanish but the Museum recommends non-Spanish speakers to consult with them for assistance.

National Portrait Gallery provides free images

The National Portrait Gallery in London is now supporting free downloads of images from its collection for academic uses. More than 53,000 low-resolution images and 87,000 high-resolution images are available with through a Creative Commons license.
More information on the NPG’s Academic license is available here.

Guggenheim Museum images now available in ARTstor

© 2009 Stephen Flavin / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

ARTstor and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation have released more than 750 images of major artworks from the permanent collection in the ARTstor Digital Library.  This first release amounts to 11% of the Guggenheim Foundation’s projected 7,000 images of art, exhibition installation views, and architecture. Future releases will include 5,000 installation views spanning from 1990s to the present from the Guggenheim Museum in New York, more than 1,000 installations views from the museums in Bilbao and Venice, and 200 historical and contemporary photographs documenting the architecture of these three museum buildings.

To read more about the Guggenheim Foundations collaboration with ARTstor, click here. To view Guggenheim collection images in ARTstor, go here(UCD viewers only).

Italian economic woes result in cultural heritage crisis

The culture and heritage minister of Italy began discussions last week that could force Italy’s national contemporary art museum to close its doors. The Maxxi, designed by Zaha Hadid, just opened those doors only two years ago. A €800,000  (over $1,000,000) gap in the museum’s accounts, along with a prediction that losses could grow to €11m in three years, prompted the minister’s actions.
[Source: The Guardian, April 24 2012]
The Maxxi is not flailing alone in this financial quagmire. Earlier this year, UNESCO accused the Italian government of failing to maintain the archaeological site of Pompeii.  In 2010, the House of Gladiators collapsed leaving a pile of debris and a vote of no confidence in the Italian Parliament for then Culture Minister Sandro Bondi. After relentless criticism and negative attention, the Italian government and the EU launched a a project (amounting to €105m) earlier this month to save Pompeii. Italia Nostra, a group fighting to preserve Italy’s cultural heritage, called the project a “great start” but noted that twice the amount of funding is needed to properly maintain the site.
[Source: BBC News, April 20 2012]
At the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum in Naples, the museum director has declared an “Art War.” The Casoria has started burning its artworks because of government indifference. Museum director Antonion Manfredi set fire to the first of 1,000 paintings on Tuesday in protest of government austerity measures that are taking an enormous toll on cultural institutions. The painting set on fire was by French artist Severine Bourguignon who supports the protest and watched the event online. “The survival of the museum is such an important cause that it justifies the despicable, and painful, act of destroying a work of art,” she told the BBC.
[Source: BBC News, April 20 2012]

New (and free!) apps worth exploring

Early this month, the Smithsonian Channel released a free app that allows viewers to explore their extensive video collection. Users can watch short clips to long documentaries on topics ranging from conservation work at the Smithsonian to dinosaurs. The app includes a feature called Story Space where viewers can find subjects that interest them and then create their own channels based on these topics. Requirements: iOS 4.3 or later

Another interesting app is Art Swipe. This app was developed by LACMA and released in connection with their exhibition “In Wonderland.” The free app for iPad and iPhones allows users to mash-up details from the exhibition to create a digital composite or collage inspired by the works viewed at LACMA. Artist Jody Zellen designed the app with the surrealist game “exquisite corpse” in mind. To read more about Art Swipe and what inspired Zellen, go to LACMA’s blog UNFRAMED.

Mixel is a social art-making tool and “game-changing” app according to Hrag Vartanian of the Hyperallergic blog. Hrag loved its attractive packaging, its simplicity and how social it was. On the other hand, he was concerned about the potential privacy and copyright issues. Click the here to read his complete review.

AS IT IS AGAIN, by Artist JoAnn Verburg, is perhaps the first artist’s book designed to be experienced on an iPad. Requirements: iOS 4.3 or later.

Still in beta, Clibe is an app that allows iPad users to create digital journals in the cloud. Journals can easily be published from the iPad and added to the Clibe library. The Clibe library can be browsed and subscribers can post their additions and request feedback and comments from other subscribers.

Leonardo Live!

Leonardo da Vinci will be coming to a movie theater near you. “Leonardo Live,” a HD film produced by the National Gallery in London, is a virtual tour of their blockbuster exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan.” Now you can avoid the long lines for this latest blockbuster and catch the film when broadcasting starts February 16. Until then, you can view the vimeo trailer here.