The Art Newspaper: Jewish collections looted by the Nazis to be examined and traced in new database . “A new database that aims to provide a comprehensive registry of all the Jewish collections looted by the Nazis has announced a pilot project focussing on the fate of the collection of Adolphe Schloss, whose store of Dutch Old Masters was seized by the Gestapo from the French chateau where they had been hidden for safekeeping. One third of the collection is still missing.”
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New York Times: Smithsonian Archives of American Art Gathers an Oral History of 2020
New York Times: Smithsonian Archives of American Art Gathers an Oral History of 2020. “As the pandemic set in this spring, the historians and curators at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art began doing what they do best: looking through relics of history. They found little information related to the 1918 flu pandemic in their archives, and decided to make sure that future historians would have a lot more material about this time of the coronavirus. So a team at the Archives of American Art, led by Liza Kirwin, its interim director, set out to create a thorough record for posterity.”
Museums Association: Online game enables users to curate Birmingham Museums collections
Museums Association: Online game enables users to curate Birmingham Museums collections. “The trust has formed a partnership with the recently launched online game and art platform, Occupy White Walls, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to enable players to collect and curate their own exhibitions in a virtual world. The collaboration means that users can access an initial 200 pieces from Birmingham Museum and Gallery’s art collection to curate, design and build digital art exhibitions. The available collection includes some of the city’s most famous artworks, such as The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown and Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.”
‘A crisis is always a good time to unite’: Russian art galleries form new alliance to boost industry (The Art Newspaper)
The Art Newspaper: ‘A crisis is always a good time to unite’: Russian art galleries form new alliance to boost industry. “A group of Russia’s contemporary art galleries have teamed up to form an association that aims to simplify the country’s notoriously tricky customs processes and boost the market with the help of some government funding.”
Phys .org: The microbiome of Da Vinci’s drawings
Phys .org: The microbiome of Da Vinci’s drawings. “The work of Leonardo Da Vinci is an invaluable heritage of the 15th century. From engineering to anatomy, the master paved the way for many scientific disciplines. But what else could the drawings of Da Vinci teach us? Could molecular studies reveal interesting data from the past? These questions led an interdisciplinary team of researchers, curators and bioinformaticians, from both the University of Natural Resources and Life Science and the University of Applied Science of Wien in Austria, as well as the Central Institute for the Pathology of Archives and Books (ICPAL) in Italy, to collaborate and study the microbiome of seven different drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci.”
Baltimore Sun: John Waters bequeaths his art collection to Baltimore Museum of Art, whose bathrooms will be named in his honor
Baltimore Sun: John Waters bequeaths his art collection to Baltimore Museum of Art, whose bathrooms will be named in his honor. “John Waters, Baltimore’s self-proclaimed ‘Pope of Trash,’ announced Wednesday that he’s bequeathing some of the most precious things he owns — approximately 375 prints, paintings and photographs — to the Baltimore Museum of Art. In a show of appreciation, museum officials will rename two bathrooms in the East Lobby ‘The John Waters Restrooms’ in honor of the cult filmmaker and visual artist.”
The Art Newspaper: Unesco under fire for using Met objects in anti-trafficking campaign
The Art Newspaper: Unesco under fire for using Met objects in anti-trafficking campaign. “Unesco has pulled back images from an advertising campaign intended to highlight international trafficking in looted artefacts after receiving complaints that it misrepresented the provenance of the works pictured. Among the objects used in the campaign were three from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that were not stolen in recent years as the original ads indicated.”
EurekAlert: Drawing the line to answer art’s big questions
EurekAlert: Drawing the line to answer art’s big questions. “Algorithms have shown that the compositional structure of Western landscape paintings changed ‘suspiciously’ smoothly between 1500 and 2000 AD, potentially indicating a selection bias by art curators or in art historical literature, physicists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).”
LIST: Virtual art museums and online exhibits you can visit during pandemic (Rappler)
Rappler: LIST: Virtual art museums and online exhibits you can visit during pandemic. “In the months we’ve been in lockdown due to the pandemic, a means of escape has been through art. Whether it be books, songs, films, or a newfound passion for painting, art has been our solace. To celebrate Go To An Art Museum Day on November 9, we’ve curated a list of museums you can visit in the comfort of your homes and at your own pace.”
Associated Press: Sculpture restoration work draws laughs, memories in Spain
Associated Press: Sculpture restoration work draws laughs, memories in Spain. “Restoration work on a sculpture in northern Spain has resurrected memories of a restored Christ fresco in another Spanish city eight years ago that drew ridicule as well as tourists. The latest incident concerns a relief sculpture on the exterior of an ornate office building in the city of Palencia. What was once the bust of a smiling woman now looks more like the head of a cartoon character.”
ARTNews: Comprehensive van Gogh Database Launched by Dutch Museums
ARTNews: Comprehensive van Gogh Database Launched by Dutch Museums. “A new database called Van Gogh Worldwide allows users to access provenances, technical information, archival materials, and more related to 1,000 works on paper and paintings by the famed Post-Impressionist. Launched on Thursday, the database is a collaboration between the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, and the RKD–Netherlands Institute for Art History, along with the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.”
University of Kentucky: Bolivar Art Gallery Presents New Online Exhibits Exploring Concepts of Home, Truth
University of Kentucky: Bolivar Art Gallery Presents New Online Exhibits Exploring Concepts of Home, Truth. “The University of Kentucky Bolivar Art Gallery is currently presenting two online exhibitions of creative minds from across the nation. ‘Home As Situation’ features the work of over 40 artists examining the concept of home — a place many of us are spending even more time in during a global pandemic. ‘PROTAGONY: $100 for Truth’ is a mulitmedia project organized by Esther Neff exploring the concept of truth through the lens of 12 artists. Both shows are free to the public on the Bolivar Art Gallery website now through Dec. 4.”
Art in America: Experimental Art Unlimited
Art in America: Experimental Art Unlimited. “In 1996, several years before the appearance of either Discogs (launched November 2000) or Wikipedia (launched January 2001), New York artist-turned-writer Kenneth Goldsmith created UbuWeb, an online archive of avant-garde art and literature, historic and contemporary, largely focusing on time-based mediums such as film, video, and audio (the last term encompassing lectures and poetry readings as well as music and sound art). Although far smaller than Discogs or Wikipedia, UbuWeb has had an enormous impact on the contemporary art world by making available to artists, scholars, and teachers around the world thousands of works that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible to access.”
Google Blog: India’s mini-masterpieces brought to life with AI and AR
Google Blog: India’s mini-masterpieces brought to life with AI and AR. “Miniature paintings are among the most beautiful, most technically-advanced and most sophisticated art forms in Indian culture. Though compact (about the same size as a small book), they typically tackle profound themes such as love, power and faith. Using technologies like machine learning, augmented reality and high-definition robotic cameras, Google Arts & Culture has partnered with the National Museum in New Delhi to showcase these special works of art in a magical new way.”
North Shore News: Group of Seven painter who lived in North Vancouver part of new digital collection
North Shore News: Group of Seven painter who lived in North Vancouver part of new digital collection. “The McMichael Canadian Art Collection, in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, has released an online collection of Canadian art, including pieces from Canada’s Group of Seven, it was announced earlier this week.”