Art Websites of Interest

I've been visiting a few brand new art-related websites that I thought I would share. For instance, I was thrilled to hear that the Yale Center for British Art has relaunched their website and included, for the first time, a database with digital images for all public domain paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, etc. in their collection. The image you see here of Leighton's charming portrait of Mrs. James Guthrie (1864-5) comes from the new database. Almost every museum is now working toward this goal (e.g. see the collection databases for the Met and the V&A), as it can only increase exposure to a museum's collection. In the case of specialized museums like the YCBA, an online collection database is even more important because it allows people to discover works that people might not have ever known they had. The database launch coincides with an in-house special exhibition highlighting works from their collection. I'll be able to see that show and (finally!) the Thomas Lawrence exhibition when I'm there next weekend. Yale also recently released the incredible news that they are the first university to make available digital images from their museum, archival, and library collections free of charge for all purposes, including publication. From Yale's press release: "In a departure from established convention, no license will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use. The result is that scholars, artists, students, and citizens the world over will be able to use these collections for study, publication, teaching and inspiration." Works still protected by copyright will require permissions from the copyright holder of course, but this is an incredible advancement in the sharing of intellectual property, and it sets a challenging precedence for other universities to follow.

The newly launched website Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951 is a database that highlights the lives and working practices of British sculptors from the period of the Great Exhibition of 1851 to the Festival of Britain in 1951. Information on artists such as Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925) includes things like exhibition history, chief works, associated studio assistants and pupils, etc., helping to create an integrated understanding of how sculptors were not individuals working in isolation but part of a large production of individuals who interacted with in one capacity or another.

My friend and fellow Solomon colleague CC is once again tapping into her creative juices, this time returning to her former career as a practicing artist. She has launched a site where she is selling prints and collages of her work. She has some beautiful work there, so check it out.

And my friend and fellow PhD Candidate PR has joined the world of bloggers (something I've been telling him to do for years now!) with his new blog Architecture/Cosmopolis. Specializing in Beaux-Arts and classical architecture in America and Europe, he has already written some great posts on things like the recent cleaning of the facade of the New York Public Library and Art Nouveau architecture in Brussels (which bklynbiblio readers will recall is very recently near and dear to my own heart).

50 UK Days: Week 6

This post could be subtitled “Revolution and Peace.” I’m in London at the moment, where yesterday the city center and other parts of the country were paralyzed by thousands of students protesting with sit-ins and walk-outs of classes because of the planned tuition increases in the UK (photograph: Matt Dunham/AP). When they protested a few weeks ago, it led to some serious violence, so the police were on alert. The latest report from the BBC this morning says that 32 people were in taken into custody yesterday, and while there has been more destruction, in general the protest seems to have been rather stable compared to last time. Whether it will be successful is another story. The fact that the headlines focus on the disorderly conduct of the students certainly diverts attention away from what they are trying to accomplish. I still haven’t figured out exactly how all this works here economically, except to have been told that the plan is to raise tuition fees up to 200% higher than they are now. Apparently the same tuition fees exist regardless of which funded institution one attends. In the US, of course, all of this is more arbitrary, depending on the state you are in, and in many cases the actual institution. That doesn’t take into account private schools like NYU or Columbia, where an undergraduate could pay upward of $40,000 a year now. I think Americans have grown apathetic about all of this, in particular because we see increases every year and have come to expect this, even though no one likes it. The proposed tuition increase is being seen here as a reinforcement of the social class structure, as it will prevent students from getting a university education. In the current economic crisis and job market, that is extremely discouraging. Considering that Scotland has eliminated tuition fees, and that the Liberal party had proposed to do the same thing but reneged after the last election, it is certainly understandable why the students are frustrated and protesting.

Last week, when I wasn’t working in Liverpool, I spent the rest of my week exploring a bit. The Albert Dock area is rather impressive in how the city was able to convert the abandoned former shipyard warehouses into residential, commercial, and retail spaces. In the case of Tate Liverpool, the designers were able to provide viewers with wonderful views of the Mersey River while strolling through the museum. Also on the dock is the Maritime Museum and the Museum of Slavery. On the one day I attempted to visit those museums, thinking I might have a cathartic experience regarding slavery in particular, there were about 3000 school children in the building screaming and running around like hyperactive monkeys in a cage. OK, so maybe there was actually about 300 children, but the way they were carrying on it seemed like there hundreds more. The staff couldn’t keep them under control. Needless to say, 5 minutes of that and I was out of there, having gone through a catharsis of a different kind.

After having enjoyed then tired of the shopping mall experience that is Leeds, I was uncertain if I was glad or sad to see that Liverpool One was yet another new outdoor shopping mall that ran from Albert Dock toward the city center. Capitalism is definitely hard at work in the UK. Its one consolation was the stunning mix of contemporary architectural styles, some of which literally dazzled the eye with enormous display windows, intense multi-colored lighting, diagonal roof projections, and multi-level entrances that quite easily confuse you but somehow still encourage you to keep shopping (capitalism indeed).

Located in the midst of all this, in Chavasse Park, is the John Lennon monument, unveiled on what would have been his 70th birthday on October 9 by his first wife Cynthia and son Julian Lennon. The work is a fun-filled 18-foot polychrome sculpture showing the globe, musical symbols, and stylized white doves, relates to Lennon’s message of world peace. Liverpool has been celebrating Lennon’s birthday all fall with concerts. The Bluecoat was even hosting a reenactment of the bed-in that Lennon did with Yoko Ono on their honeymoon in 1969, which I regret now not having seen (although the video stream is interesting). As for the sculpture, I can appreciate the message behind it, but the work is dwarfed by the props used to announce and explain it. Even worse, the park is presently the site for a holiday village and almost impossible to find the sculpture. One can only hope all of this will go away soon, so that the sculpture will stand on its own in a natural environment with trees and park benches, so as to celebrate the essence of peace that it is meant to commemorate.

And in the spirit of change, revolution/peace, and gratitude, Happy Thanksgiving to my bklynbiblio readers!

50 UK Days: Week 3

All Hallow's Eve--a.k.a. Halloween--has only become a big deal in the UK in the past few years. The majority of people I saw celebrating did so this past Saturday night, and almost everyone was in the 18-25 year range. They were all dressed in “sexy knickers” too. I don’t think I saw a single scary costume out there. But my favorite explanation as to why Halloween is so much more significant in the US than here came from a ITV newscaster this morning who claimed it was because America has huge pumpkins, like the large ones in the picture above (photo: Mark Boster, L.A. Times). In the UK they never get that big. I guess it's true then...size does matter.

Choosing to ignore most of the drunken revelry, I spent the weekend exploring more of Leeds (and doing research of course). On Saturday I shopped at the City Market, which basically is a flea market meets meat/fish/produce market. With all the possible shopping options here, my mother would have been ecstatic. If we had come to England on a visit, I could have dropped her off in Leeds for 2 weeks so I could go site-seeing, and she would have been like a bluejay in a birdbath flittering from one shop to the next in sheer delight.

On Sunday, I spent a few hours at the Leeds City Museum. Living in NYC, it’s difficult to visit museums in smaller cities and be open-minded about their collections and installations, but occasionally you can be impressed. The City Museum did just that, in particular with their displays on the history of the city. I took the digital photograph you see here of one part of this installation focusing on mid-Victorian history. You can see display cases of historic clothing and everyday objects, and between the cases are videos of people reenacting the lives of Leeds citizens from the past, using their actual words and real-life scenarios taken from surviving personal diaries and correspondence. The domes hanging from the ceiling are where you stand to hear the videos. The history section goes from Anglo-Saxon days to the present, but of course my favorite parts were from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. The displays all show an awareness of the Disneyfication of museums, which in the US are geared for children. Here I was surprised to see adults enchanted by the flip-charts, games, trivia, and whatnot, to the point that I found myself joining them in pulling on levers and pressing buttons too, just to learn more about the city’s history. Did you know, for instance, that the population grew from 17,000 in the 1770s to more than 89,000 by the 1840s? This exponential growth in population was because of the industrial revolution, which made Leeds one of the most important wool manufacturing production centers in the world.

Other parts of the museum were less thrilling. The section on the ancient world has a requisite exposed mummy in the Egyptian section and a few insignificant examples of Greco-Roman marbles and vases. The natural history section has lots of taxidermied animals, which always freak me out, so I ignored that section. They did have a special exhibition on that was interesting though: Heroes & Heroines: Fashion from Film. The show included outfits worn by actors in different historic films made for the cinema and television. In part, the exhibition is seen as relevant for an area rich in the history of wool and textile manufacturing, and a countryside (Yorkshire) where many historical dramas have been either set or filmed. It included things like Cate Blanchett’s coronation gown when she played the Tudor queen Elizabeth and Kate Winslet’s evening gown as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies in Finding Neverland. The curators juxtaposed this with true historical clothing from the represented time period, to show how costume designers base their work on original styles, but modify them for the camera. Of all the outfits on display, I found myself chuckling over those worn by Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. There was the banyan robe he wore after stepping from a bath, and the outfit he stripped out of before diving into the lake. The outfits and text labels for these couldn’t help but remind us how much we loved Firth’s watery scenes. Even the label for an historical white linen shirt from the early 1800s noted that it was “typical of the kind of garment the BBC’s Mr. Darcy would have worn when taking a dip in the lake. It is a lot longer than shirts worn today...because, in the past, men did not wear underpants! Instead men would simply tuck their shirt between their legs.” You can almost hear the giggle in-between the words, can’t you? On that note, it seemed only appropriate to end with that classic scene of Mr. Darcy’s dip in the lake and said linen shirt. If you’ve never seen this miniseries, you must. It is one of the best BBC literary adaptations ever made, and Firth really is quite sexy.

My New Faux Dog

Meet Pierre, my new faux dog! My dear friend SVH and my canine nephew George (whom you've met before) sent him to me as an early birthday present. He comes from Jake's Dog House, the place with "cool stuff for cool dogs." While I wish I had a real dog, for now, with my crazy schedule, a faux dog will do very nicely. As you can see, Pierre is a black toy poodle. He's currently hanging out on the bed with Ted, a bear that was a Christmas gift from my mother about a decade ago.

Now, wouldn't Pierre look fancy in a pink beret like the one Missy Boo has? (She's one of the ASPCA's 2009 Furry Fashionistas.)