Artistic Collaborations at MOMA, part 2

To continue on from my previous post (in October, so I'm not exactly a prolific blogger), I stopped exploring the introductory page, and headed straight for the multimedia page, (also the exhibition page), which turned out to have images for only about a dozen of the artists in the exhibit. So the exhibition checklist (see my previous post) turned out to have the better list of images from all the artists in the show after all.

To see other multimedia, probably totally unrelated to this show, click on the 'More Multimedia' tab to the upper right of the intro page. The content there seems to change often so it's total serendipity as to what you'll find - just another place to get distracted and find all sorts of interesting videos and audio descriptions of paintings (Edward Munch's 'The Storm', for instance).

Universal Limited Art Editions is the printmaking workshop that is the focus of this exhibit. The first page you will see here is quite unimpressive, but once you start clicking on links, you can wander around for hours. The History link gives a pretty extensive explanation about how the workshop came about and the almost invisible 'photo archive' button at the bottom of the page leads to some quite amazing photos (you can either use the text link or the grid, but I preferred the text simply because the surprises were more fun). Here you can find a young Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman in an apron and a tie, and a whole lot more.
Finish exploring the site.

Tatyana Grosman must be one of the few people without a Wikipedia entry but the Jewish Women's Archive has an obituary and there's a very good transcription of an oral history interview with her at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian - yet another website to get lost on.

Artistic Collaborations at MOMA, part 1

Sometimes being very far behind in exploring websites that I have found years ago ends up with many more trails to follow than I had started with. I started this entry back in 2007, likely with this article by Martha Schwender, Even in the Digital Age, a Strong Case for Printmaking, in the New York Times. Then I would have looked for the MoMA exhibition webpage for "Artistic Collaborations: 50 Years of Universal Limited Art Editions". The introductory page is just that, not a lot of detail, just some links and a short paragraph summarizing the background of the exhibit.

Once I started exploring the links from this page, I quickly discovered a wealth of information (and all this wonderful content is still on the Web six years later) about printmaking and the artists who incorporated it into their art. Before going to the exhibition site, outlined in red, I looked at the two links below, since they sometimes get forgotten, once you start viewing the main site.

To begin, I looked at the mundanely-named exhibition checklist. Here you will find thumbnails of the 88 prints in the exhibit, and this is where you can easily get distracted. There are four approaches to viewing the works - I chose single object after some experimentation, since it gives the most information about the prints in one place. Also, on some of the images, although on not nearly enough of them, there is a little magnifying glass image in the lower right corner, and this allows for closer viewing of the artwork.

The  "Related Events" link doesn't really go anywhere, but there are plenty of other avenues to explore related to this exhibit - I'll share what I find next time.

Women in the Civil Rights Movement

I wish that Coursera had been invented eight years ago when I first retired, but now that it exists, I can only begin to describe how wonderful a site it is for offering university level classes in many, many subject areas.

I have taken several classes so far (it is very easy to take too many classes at one time) but the one that I'm discussing in this post is Women and the Civil Rights Movement, taught by Elsa Barkley Brown, who is an Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland. The introduction to the class is on YouTube, as are the intros to at least 246 other classes.

Barkley Brown's website lists some of her published articles under Research, with links to just a few of the full papers online. I'll leave exploring the rest of the links on the homepage to the viewer - exploring those trails and getting distracted is half the fun of the web.

One of the things that I have found out while taking this class is that I knew nothing about the early female activists in civil rights. By early, I mean in the early and latter parts of the 19th century, when black and white women worked against lynching in the United States. For an idea of what these women did, see the January 1936 issue of the Bulletin of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching at the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - a good site to search and browse since their online collection of archival material seems to be pretty extensive.

Another site documents the persistence of Black Women in the NAACP in working against lynching. Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, is a wonderful resource with a substantial amount of material on women's rights.

One of these early women activists was Ida B. Wells. Her family maintains a memorial foundation, with biographical and other information under the 'About Ida B. Wells' tab.  One of her books is The Red Record at Project Gutenberg. This link is to the full-text version; you can do an author search on the homepage to see her other two available books. 

Another young woman to learn about is Barbara Johns - read the Wikipedia article to see just how important one voice, along with organized support, can be in changing history.

Lewis Comfort Tiffany at the Met

Once upon a time, November 21, 2006–May 20, 2007 to be precise, there was an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there was an exhibit titled Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall: An Artist's Country Estate. While there are a few remaining links to audio and text on this page, whatever images I saw back in 2007 have since disappeared.

Not to be deterred, or to erase this post without trying to find what the Met might still contain in its web archives about Tiffany, I did a search. There are 1032 "collections" available of Tiffany's work, and of the [work ] of other artists in the Tiffany collection (check the last numbers and get the correct name of the collection. Check what info there is for pieces with no images)

(do a spell check on the text in this post - in Word)

National Film Board Canada

After reading on a message board after Ryan Larkin's death that the video about his life wasn't available on the NFB site, I went Googling for it. When I checked the Flash version of the site, I ended up with a RealVideo clip from the film by Chris Landreth which didn't work. Try again to see if any of the Real files work.

While wandering around the site I found, among the animations, this film, Blackfly, by Chris Hinton. As far as I could tell, there are many (or just some) 'available films' on the site in Animation, as well as [mention 'techniques, which will show up at the top of the Blackfly page].

Arts for Transit on the MTA, New York City

Considering that I first found this New York Times article and the website it refers to back in 2007, I think that both are a testament to the longevity of information posted to the web, and the persistence of those who want to share art with the rest of the world.

The NYT article by David W. Dunlap is subject to the monthly limit of 10 free articles, but even if you don't subscribe to the newspaper, the article is still available, as long as you haven't already reached the limit. It has a link to a audio slide show by Dunlap which includes some very good images of the artwork he talks about.

Now for my critique of the MTA website. It starts with a main page with information relating to the art but also about the MTA so, unless you're looking for schedules, etc., stick to the links under the photo. The 'Permanent Art" link leads to photos of the artwork on the different branch lines and stations. These are zoomable, which is good. I can see that exploring this site could take up a lot of time. I did some exploring, and my favourite piece so far is by Wopo Holup at the Dyckman Street station on the New York City Transit. By the way, I'm not posting direct links to the parts of the website since half the fun of visiting art sites is rambling around after you find the main page.

The Lightbox link directs viewers to information and slide shows about photography exhibits at four stations. The exhibits are changed every 6 months and so far I haven't found an archive of earlier shows. Posters and Art Cards are for sale though one link, and, again, the images are zoomable, and there are archives on these pages. I really like the Art Cards, but they're a bit pricey for my budget, considering the postage.

There are even lengthy music samples found through the "Music" link, and some poetry posters on the "Poetry" page, although none earlier than 2012. "Podcasts" contains audio files and images of the artwork discussed. I'd advise opening one or other of the tabs in a separate window so you can look at the work being discussed. Under the Podcasts tab, you'll also find the Google Earth Tour. Once Google Earth is installed, you'll find yourself hovering over an image of  New York with a guide to the stops along the MTA lines. This is one of those neat little hidden marvels that has multiple tours along six different lines, where you can follow the tour, view the art, and then zoom in wherever you want to explore the city and environs. I even took the opportunity to zoom out and travel up to Nova Scotia, but since this is not a Google map, it was pretty hard to find my little village.

Finally, the index page has a list of art and artists, but I never did find the archive for earlier Lightbox works. There are a few broken and misleading links thoughout the site, but not too many, which is pretty marvellous for a site that has been around this long. One last page, with a direct link: the Grand Central Station 100th celebration.

Brooklyn Museum online

I have reviewed several exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum but I want to discuss, in this post, the wealth of material available throughout their website.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/online/

Also check the rest of their website - treat separate from Sackler Museum, which is next)
and see under podcasts the large number of videos that can be downloaded from iTunes - some are on YouTube

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions has past exhibits (to at least 1999 are good) and listing back to 1800s. Look for blog, and does

Arthur Rothstein and unexpected connections

I came across a photo by Arthur Rothstein while I was listening to a lecture and watching slides by Jeff Curto at --- (describe his site, and the podcast). [This site doesn't seem to have the direct link to the Photohistory webpage]

I looked up Rothstein and found the FSA page. Imagine my surprise when I saw that he had photographed at Gee's Bend in 1937. [mention previous blog entry]
Photos of Gee's Bend - brief mention of quilters at end of page

Main site http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fadocamer.html
Also http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html


The site is confusing but try to figure out the links because these are the depression era photos of the FSA