Smithsonian Magazine: You Can Now Explore 103 ‘Lost’ Hokusai Drawings Online. “Earlier this month, the British Museum announced its acquisition of a trove of newly rediscovered drawings by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, who is best known for 19th-century masterpiece The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. Visitors can’t yet see the illustrations in person, but as the London institution notes in a statement, all 103 works are now available to explore online.”
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Getty Iris: How an Artist Teamed up with Her Dog to Re-create Art
The Getty Iris: How an Artist Teamed up with Her Dog to Re-create Art. “Every weekday morning, Eliza Reinhardt and her creative partner, Finn, start their day at 7am by getting up, brewing a cup of coffee, and snuggling while they browse online galleries to find a work of art to re-create as part of the Getty Museum Challenge…. Finn is a three-year-old Australian shepherd, but he follows direction as carefully as an actor on a film set. ‘I really do think Finn takes this on as his daily task,’ Reinhardt said. ‘I say, “Finn, do you want to do a photo? You want to go take a picture?” And he’s ready to go.'”
NPR: If You Have To Wear A Mask, It Might As Well Be A Masterpiece
NPR: If You Have To Wear A Mask, It Might As Well Be A Masterpiece. “Many museums are still closed, but their shops are doing a lively business with face masks that are funny, or gorgeous, or daring, and can be ordered online. Usually the masks are based on art in their collections. They’re nonmedical (but at least one of them — The Detroit Institute of Arts — is selling liners you can tuck inside the mask, for extra protection.) DIA is selling some stunning masks, too. One, based on a Monet painting, gives you an Impressionist beard!”
A Hudson River School Legacy: The Weir Family Papers Now Fully Digitized (Smithsonian Magazine)
Smithsonian Magazine: A Hudson River School Legacy: The Weir Family Papers Now Fully Digitized. “‘It was a great pleasure for us to have your entire family under our roof. I delighted to talk of old times and of old fellows-comparing the Past and the Present and weighing in the scales of experience. New schools, old schools and No schools.’ These words were penned by Frederic Edwin Church in a letter to John Ferguson Weir on October 12, 1888. Written from Olana, Church’s beloved home and arguably his masterpiece on the Hudson River, the letter forms part of the Weir family papers (1809–circa 1861) which are now fully digitized and available on the Archives of American Art’s website. The collection, although small at 0.8 linear feet, houses a surprising number of detailed and enlightening letters from a host of prominent artists and scholars of the nineteenth century.”
Beyond the gallery wall: Art world retrains the public, virtually (Christian Science Monitor)
Christian Science Monitor: Beyond the gallery wall: Art world retrains the public, virtually. “When a pipe burst in January at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, it caused a flood that shuttered the popular museum in Rockland for a few months. The crisis forced a deep dive into technology to keep audiences engaged – and it left the CMCA staff better prepared for the pandemic-related shutdown in mid-March. ‘The flood gave us a head start so that when COVID hit, we could respond rapidly and continue to offer the three-dimensional, virtual tours that we’d just produced,” says CMCA Executive Director Suzette McAvoy. “We’d also received some great feedback by then, so we were awarded a grant that has helped us move forward.’ As museums and art galleries look for the resources to stay open and preserve staffing, some are finding that a hybrid approach – part virtual, part in-person – is the best way to engage with the public.”
Oil Paintings To Vectors: The Archive Finding The History Of Arabic Book Cover Design (Scene Arabia)
I found a more recent story about this Instagram archive, but it’s not a patch on this July article from Scene Arabia: Oil Paintings To Vectors: The Archive Finding The History Of Arabic Book Cover Design. “Throughout the Arab world, there is one artist whose work can be found in every home, whether or not we know it. ‘There is not one household that doesn’t have my paintings,’ the late Egyptian painter Gamal Kotb once said of his ubiquitous work that needed no canvas, no heavy frames, and no galleries to exhibit. Throughout much of the 20th century, Kotb made a name for himself creating the covers for bestselling novels by the biggest names in publishing, including Naguib Mahfouz, Ihsan Abdel Quddous, and Yusuf Idris. The artist became one of Egypt and the Arab world’s most celebrated artists, albeit in a medium that remains wildly underrated today.”
Hyperallergic: Five Latinx Art Spaces Band Together to Amplify Their Reach
Hyperallergic: Five Latinx Art Spaces Band Together to Amplify Their Reach. “Angelenos now have a one-stop website consolidating exhibitions and events for Latinx art and culture. It’s a brilliant and sensible idea for a city where roughly half of the population is Latinx. The website… is one of the first initiatives created by the newly formed Latinx Arts Alliance (known as LAA), which is comprised of five notable art spaces in the greater Los Angeles area: the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Downtown, Self Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights, the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, and the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) in Venice Beach.”
University of Cape Town: New website for UCT art collection and other updates
University of Cape Town: New website for UCT art collection and other updates. “UCT houses a collection of some 1700 artworks – many of which representing the work of South Africa’s most noted artists, as well as the art of emerging talents. The collection is exhibited throughout UCT’s four campuses, dispersed among buildings, offices, lecture halls, passages and plazas. The Works of Art Committee is proud to announce that the collection now has, for the first time in its 42-year history, a dedicated website.”
MIT News: Rewriting the rules of machine-generated art
MIT News: Rewriting the rules of machine-generated art. “Horses don’t normally wear hats, and deep generative models, or GANs, don’t normally follow rules laid out by human programmers. But a new tool developed at MIT lets anyone go into a GAN and tell the model, like a coder, to put hats on the heads of the horses it draws. In a new study appearing at the European Conference on Computer Vision this month, researchers show that the deep layers of neural networks can be edited, like so many lines of code, to generate surprising images no one has seen before.”
Google Blog: Portraits of healthcare heroes on Google Arts & Culture
Google Blog: Portraits of healthcare heroes on Google Arts & Culture. “In March, the UK locked down the country to contain the spread of COVID-19. For many this led to a heightened period of dread and anxiety, but also creativity and heroism. During lockdown artist Tom Croft created #portraitsforNHSheroes to galvanize artists across the country to celebrate workers on the frontline. Tom collaborated with the charity Paintings in Hospitals to give the collection a more permanent home, as it closely aligns with the values and ethos of their mission to improve health through art. As a result of the collaboration, Google Arts & Culture created an online exhibition of over 700 contemporary portraits that were submitted as part of Tom’s #portraitsforNHSheroes initiative.”
Getty Iris: More to Explore as the Ghent Altarpiece Website Gets an Update
Getty Iris: More to Explore as the Ghent Altarpiece Website Gets an Update. “Since 2012, the website Closer to Van Eyck has made it possible for millions around the globe to zoom in on the intricate, breathtaking details of the Ghent Altarpiece, one of the most recognized and most-studied works of art in the world. Now visitors to the site have even more ways to explore this monumental work of art from afar, with the launch today of a new version of the site that includes images of recently restored sections of the paintings as well as new videos and education materials.”
ELLE: 7 Black Contemporary Artists To Follow On Instagram
ELLE: 7 Black Contemporary Artists To Follow On Instagram. “There are over 671 million posts on Instagram that are hashtagged #art. But how many of those posts come from Black artists? In response to the death of George Floyd, many Black artists have emerged to the forefront with powerful work. One of Beyoncé’s favorite artist’s, Hank Willis Thomas, responded with a powerful image of hands of every shade lifted into the air. But Thomas is just one of many Black contemporary artists using Instagram to share their work. Below, a list of seven of our favorites.”
Architectural Digest: So This Is What the Noguchi Museum Got Up to During Quarantine
Architectural Digest: So This Is What the Noguchi Museum Got Up to During Quarantine. “With limited social interaction comes more opportunities for reflection, meditation, and contemplation. The last five months have offered that opportunity, though people and institutions have taken to it with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, has chosen to lean even further into the culture of stillness that their founder Isamu Noguchi engaged with during his lifetime. During one week in May, Dakin Hart, the senior curator of the museum, and artist Nick Knight collaborated on a special project celebrating the ideals of Noguchi. Distance Noguchi is a series of twenty-two films of roughly four hours each (edited down from 80 hours of raw footage) that have now been made available through the museum website.”
Getty Iris: Inside the Senior Communities Taking the Getty Museum Challenge
Getty Iris: Inside the Senior Communities Taking the Getty Museum Challenge. “The Getty Museum Challenge found its way to many senior communities by way of staff, often the activities directors who work to provide residents with entertainment like classes, day trips, and game nights. With early outbreaks of COVID-19 clustered in senior communities, these facilities were among the first to institute safety precautions such as prohibiting visitors and trips outside the grounds, limiting class sizes or canceling them altogether, and instructing residents to avoid gathering in groups—leaving staff scrambling to find ways to keep residents both busy and socially-distant.”
Illinois News Bureau: Illinois researcher’s work among the pop-ups that invade your online day
Illinois News Bureau: Illinois researcher’s work among the pop-ups that invade your online day. “A new online digital art exhibition features the work of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign researcher and artist Ben Grosser. But instead of displaying on the exhibition’s website, the work of Grosser and six other artists will come to you. It will appear on your computer screen unannounced at intervals throughout the day – pop-up art, rather than pop-up ads.”
