Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Technology

Art History For The 21st Century

In fall 2012, James Cuno, president of the Getty Trust, chastised art historians in an op-ed on the web for being behind the times in their use of digital tools. I agreed, and wrote a post about it. So I’ve watched to see what the Getty was going to do about it — and I outline some of those initiatives in today’s Wall Street Journal.

JamesCunoMy Cultural Conversation with Cuno is headlined Modernizing Art History, and it details his thoughts, as well as a few from others who work at the Getty, on digital art history.

Even though this is 2014, most curators and academic art historians remain a bit at sea about the real, as opposed to the theoretical, potential of exploiting digital technologies to create new knowledge in the art realm. But Cuno promised, as I wrote,

I’m convinced this is something the Getty has to enable. …We have the means to push the needle.

The Getty Foundation is sponsoring three institutes — at George Mason University, Harvard and University of California, Los Angeles — this summer, “where art historians can learn about the tools, methods and potential of digital art history.” Applications are closed, however, and as I understand it not everyone will be accepted.

I learned this morning of another such institute — also already full — at Middlebury College, sponsored by the Kress Foundation. It’s called the “Summer Institute on Digital Mapping and Art History” and runs Aug. 3 through Aug. 15.

I suspect we will need many more of these, along with a lot of good question that can be asked with the new tools, before we make great discoveries — but I am hopeful.

 

Way Beyond Museum Walls: A Driving Tour

Many museums these days say they want to meet people where they are — to go beyond their walls. And where are a lot of people but in their cars?

image004That may or may not have been the motivation of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Ct., when it developed its newest initiative, but I thought would give a little visibility to it anyway: To accompany its exhibition Pasture to Pond: Connecticut Impressionism, which runs through June 22, the Bruce has developed a guided driving tour, complete with map,  of some of the scenes around the state that are featured in the paintings in the show.

It’s using a system called Guide by Cell to get people to experience art “beyond the exhibition, indeed beyond the Museum’s doors, into our local towns and villages to further the appreciation and understanding highlighted in this show that Connecticut was a birthplace of American Impressionism.”

According to the press release:

The driving tour begins at the Bruce Museum and ends at Greenwich Point Park, highlighting five different locations over a distance of about 12 miles. Active driving time is approximately 30 minutes. The guide and map will be available in the gallery to exhibition participants, as well as on the Museum’s website at brucemuseum.org. All of the Museum’s Guide by Cell programs are generously underwritten by Nat and Lucy Day.

The release calls this “a new foray into the Museum’s use of the Guide by Cell system,” which implies that its in-museum cell tours use the same system — and that’s good because presumably museum-goers will already be familiar with it. Guide by Cell is new to me — I’ve actually never used a cell phone guide in a museum — but it calls itself a leading supplier of guides to cultural institutions.

Photo Credit: October Morning, 1919, by Leonard Ochtman, courtesy of the Bruce Museum

New Web Resources Everywhere, It Seems

Hard on the heels of the recent announcement by the Vatican, that its bounteous library had begun digitizing all 82,000 manuscripts in its 135 collections — thanks to help from the Japanese Japanese technology group NTT Data — the Tate has made available a rich artistic resource. It’s called Audio Arts, and it consists of 245 hours of more than 1,640 interviews with artists, critics and other art world figures. This one is already available here.

Beuys+Furlong_1985As the Tate’s press release describes it:

The list of interviewees …includes some of the most important artists of the late twentieth century. It features, among others, Marina Abramovic, Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Buren, John Cage, Tacita Dean, Michael Craig-Martin, Tracey Emin, Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, Mona Hatoum, Susan Hiller, Damien Hirst, Howard Hodgkin, Anish Kapoor, Ellsworth Kelly, John Latham, Richard Long, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Nancy Spero, Sam Taylor-Wood, Mark Wallinger, Andy Warhol and Rachel Whiteread. Many artists were interviewed when they were beginning to be known, and subsequently at later dates, shedding light on the trajectory of their artistic careers and the development of their ideas and views.

This archive, acquired from Bill Furlong (seen interviewing Joseph Beuys) in 2004, involved more than “350 boxes of taped interviews on reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes and digital formats, as well as other material such as mock-ups of each issue, associated correspondence and photographs.” They’ve all been digitized over the past two years, with support from The Rootstein Hopkins Foundation.

More details are here. Start listening.

 

The Met Aces A New Online Feature

I’ve always been a fan of galleries showcasing new acquisitions by art museums, so I suppose I was predisposed to like the web feature announced today by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.* It’s called MetCollects, and there will be one episode a month, each going deep on a recent acquisition. The press release describes it as a “first look,” but of the three episodes so far they are all already on view.

DP277234No matter, really. Aside from the focus on new things to see, I like MetCollects because viewers of it will — or can — really look and learn. Each has a slide show, and if you turn it on — instead of changing slides yourself — each slide remains on the screen for about 4 seconds, which sounds like a little but isn’t (try it). Part two of two episodes provides a video interview with the artist (William Kentridge in one case) or the curator (Keith Christiansen). Unlike some previous web attempts, these too are substantial in length — 4:03 for Kentridge and 3:11 for Christiansen.

So what are the inaugural episodes? From the release:

* The Refusal of Time (2012), a …multimedia meditation on time and space by artist William Kentridge… The installation is jointly owned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum.
* The 1808 portrait by Francois Gérard of one of the greatest political figures of modern times, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord [at left], with an interview by Keith Christiansen…Curator of European Paintings.
* …the Mishneh Torah by the Master of the Barbo Missal. This Italian manuscript from around 1457 is now jointly owned by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The last one does not have a video, and I am not sure why.

At the bottom of each feature, there’s a link to Recent Acquisitions Bulletins — another plus. There you’ll find downloadable publications from the last five years.

This feature seems to be an ace to me because of its focus and its depth. It joins three other web features from the Met –the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, “launched in 2000, [which] …receives more than one million visits per month’ Connections (2011) [, which] offers personal perspectives on works of art in the collection by 100 members of the Museum’s staff [and] 82nd & Fifth (2013) [, which] features 100 curators from across the Met who talk about 100 works of art from the collection that changed the way they see the world—one work, one curator, two minutes at a time.”

I’ve heard complaints only about the third, because (some critics say) the episodes are too short to convey meaningful information. That’s a matter of taste and attention span.

My only complaint is finding these features on the Met website. They are all tabs under the “Collections” heading on the home page, but I initially found them by using the site index.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Met

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met

 

 

“Morning Canvas” Debuts, But When?

When do people want to “consume” the arts, for lack of a better word? Art museums, I’ve long said, are curbing their attendance, their much desired “accessibility,” by continuing to offer 20th century hours — mostly in the daytime, sometimes closing as early as 4 p.m. — in a 21st century world, where most people are busy working during museums’ opening hours.

MorningCanvasNow there’s another example of a well-intended arts offering at a crazy, unrealistic hour.

Recently, the Ovation TV channel launched an “arts programming” block, a two-hour show called “Morning Canvas.” But when it is cablecast? At 7 a.m. EST and 4 a.m. PST. Who does Ovation think will be watching then? A.m. TV is already a difficult time period and, as the editorial course of programs like “Today” and “Good Morning, America” seem to show, it’s easier to sell celebrity and fluff at that hour than seriousness.

This is really too bad. “Morning Canvas” bills itself as “featur[ing] an eclectic mix of US premiere documentary series and specials, encompassing all arts categories, including classical music performances, photography, dance, theater and the visual arts.” Hosted by Nikki Boyer, it began airing, Monday through Friday, on Feb. 24. The lineup looks interesting to me. Here are some highlights, cited by the press release:

  • The Aristocrats – Monday, March 10; Tuesday, March 11; Wednesday, March 12; Thursday, March 13. This fascinating four-part series follows some of the most famous society families in Britain and Europe – the Rothschilds, the Shaftesburys, the Marlboroughs of Blenheim and the March family of Goodwood – as they try to preserve their traditions and estates in a modern age.
  • Unfinished Masterpieces – Monday, March 24. Alastair Sooke explores the mysterious appeal of unfinished works of art. From Dickens’s unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Jane Austen’s Sanditon to Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, he talks to those who have attempted to finish these literary enigmas and those who believe that any such task is impossible.
  • Treasures of Ancient Egypt – Monday,March 31; Tuesday, April 1; Wednesday April 2. In this epic, visually stunning adventure through Ancient Egypt, journalist and art critic Alastair Sooke tracks down the treasures of the longest-lasting civilization in history uncovering the true story of its rise and fall through the ages.

This week, “Morning Canvas” is focused on:

  • Sex and Sensibility: The Allure of Art Nouveau – Monday, March 3; Tuesday, March 4; Wednesday, March 5.  In the 1890s, Art Nouveau was an explosion of sexual, scandalous and revolutionary ways of depicting the world that swept rapidly from country to country, influencing the fine arts, graphic art, interior design, jewelry, furniture and lighting. The Art Nouveau movement embraced both new materials and technological innovations, such as various paints, iron and glass, while expounding on lines and curves based on real-life figures. Much of today’s art and concert posters are influenced by the Art Nouveau movement. Filmed in London, Glasgow, Paris, Brussels and Vienna, this series documents this hugely influential movement that rose rapidly to prominence and fell just as quickly due to the start of the First World War.

So, I guess the answer is time-shifting, saving the morning airing for nighttime watching. At least Ovation is trying — putting visual arts on television is always a challenge.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Ovation