George Eastman House Photography Collections Online:

The George Eastman House Photography Collections Online is in a state of flux as of today. It seems to be somewhere in between the old site, and the new one, which is in beta. And not very far into beta, I'd guess, since the search function doesn't seem to work very well. What's there is quite nice though. I'm guessing that everything that is on the old site hasn't been transferred to the new site as yet.

I know, for instance that there are 12 Rayographs by Man Ray and 71 'selected images' of work by László Moholy-Nagy on the old site, but they don't show up in a search on the new site although the search terms are present. No matter when the sites get straightened out, the material there is quite marvellous. There are images from 1839 to the present, and you could spend hours looking at work by well-known photographers and those who are obscure.

The main George Eastman House website has a variety of links - blog, podcast, Twitter, Flickr, and much more. Unfortunately, the exhibitions links don't have much extra material about the photographs exhibited.

The Société Anonyme

The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America has been shown, and will be showing, at several venues between 2006 and 2010.

At first glance, the site at the Yale University Art Gallery, looks very well organized, and it is. Just don't try using the 'magnify' icon - at best you'll be sent to a window that immediately closes. The coverage of art and artists is very good though, even if the art can't be examined closely. There are a few extras as well; for instance, under Artists - Duchamp and Dreier, there is a short film of Duchamp's Rotary Glass and a radio interview with Katherine Drier [sic] which, dated in 1937 as it is, has some hilarious moments, and some insight into the early opinions on abstract art.

Some links and hints to help you explore the site (which I think is a bit outdated - at least IE doesn't like it very much; maybe it will be updated when the show returns to Yale in 2010) and get a variety of information about the show: -

Under the 'Resources' tab on the main website there are good links, especially the Exhibition Catalogue. I found it easier to see if I went directly to the Resources page rather than using the tab link. The Press Release has some good information as well.

A New York Times review by Roberta Smith contains a description of the relationship between Marcel Duchamp and Katherine Dreier.

KCRW's Politics of Culture podcast did a very good discussion and description of the Société Anonyme and the shows at Yale and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in July 2006.

The Hammer show was the only one which I could find, of the several venues that were part of the U.S. national tour, that had a half-decent webpage.

Incidently, through the Wikipedia entry for Dreier, I found an excellent resource - the papers of the Société Anonyme Archive at the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. There you will find photos of artists and their art, among other things. Archives like this one, which show very good virtual reproductions of their contents, are the reason that the Web is such a marvellous invention. The Digital Images collection of the Beinecke is beyond marvellous.

Dan Flavin - fluorescent lights can be beautiful

When I first saw the webpage for Dan Flavin: A Retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, back in 2006, I thought it was an excellent example of an archived exhibit. While it's not horrible, and it does have quite a bit of text, it doesn't display the artworks as well as it could be done.

The "Exhibition Feature" link has the best display of the artist's paintings and his fluorescent pieces, along with descriptions of his art, divided under seven headings. What works well here is that there are links to other artists' work within the text, so that you can see illustrations of the points the writer is making.

What the NGA did include in its overview of the exhibit was a list of other galleries which had it scheduled. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has a wonderful website with a slideshow (including a zoom feature that doesn't lose definition with magnification).

Art Knowledge News, which, incidentally, is an absolutely marvellous resource, has a nicely illustrated article about the German exhibit of Retrospective. And YouTube, bless them, has a good long search result list for Flavin.

Gilded Splendor: at the Asia Society Museum

The website for the exhibit Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China's Liao Empire (907 - 1125) at the Asia Society Museum is a bit tricky to negotiate but there is an excellent display of art objects from the Liao dynasty of China. To start off, you need to click on the boots in the lower right corner, then on 'image gallery', then on one of the titles to see thumbnails of objects. Sometimes you have to guess which links to follow but patience will be rewarded. There are gorgeous images of 800-1000 year old art objects here, and they can be magnified and moved around, most of the time. You can go on a virtual tour of some of the tombs, although this is by looking at the pictures on the wall, or objects on the floor. The New York Times had a short review of the exhibit back in 2006.

Webpages for past exhibits are available back to 2000, and complete sites are still maintained, but not for every show, sadly.

The Asia Society site itself contains just about anything you would want to know about any country in Asia - even recipes. The "For Kids' link made my anti-virus software have hysterics, though.