Newark Public Library Exhibits

The Newark Public Library Exhibits page (Past Exhibitions) doesn't always lead to pages filled with links and large images, but a few of them do. Even if there isn't substantial content, there are usually a few pictures which are interesting and enticing, leaving you wishing that they had been enlarged.

A Window to Your Government... has only a few enlarged images, but at least one, the Arctic bluebird, is worth clicking on. I'd guess that the images are scanned from the original since there are artifacts and graininess present but I still like the feel that I'm examining the page. The article in the New York Times mentioned a "patent application for a giant wooden elephant" which isn't shown on the website. Lucy the Elephant now has her own website and, if you click the 'history' button, you'll find some excerpts from James Lafferty's original application.

The current exhibition, as of today, is The Irish in Newark and New Jersey. For this exhibit, there is more extra material, including a podcast (my browser saw this as a video and temporarily froze) , and more exhibit photos. These are clickable, and lead to larger images, with that little magnifiying glass which means you can get an even larger picture. The quality of the scanned images seems better, so I hope that the Library will continue to use this enhanced quality in their future exhibits.

Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution

Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, is an exhibit which concentrates on feminist art from 1965 to 1980. What the site seems to lack is an essay describing that art and the social history of that time period.

It does, however, have many images of the art and the artists. There are audio clips of three of the artists, Lynn Hershman, Judy Chicago,and Senga Nengudi, accompanying pictures of their art. Video files pop up all over the site as well as comments from online and in-person viewers.

I found that the site was a bit disorganized, so I would take this as encouraging roaming around, trying to find more interesting links. According to one of the comments I saw, the artists' lectures will be eventually recorded as podcasts although I wasn't able to find any as of today. Links to reviews of the show, including the one from the New York Times that led me to look for this site have been collected on one page.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

The Hiroshi Sugimoto online exhibit at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian is a very good one. Unfortunately, there is no direct link to the exhibit web page, that I could find, so the best thing to do is to go to the Online Exhibitions page and scroll down to the Sugimoto link under Japanese Art. There are lots of distractions on the page and all of them are worth checking. I may come back to one or two of these exhibits later.
[August 4, 2009 - Actually here is the direct link to the Sugimoto exhibit but check out the Online Exhibitions anyway].

The Sugimoto site has text of 'words' by the artist - grey on black so it not easily readable. There is a very well-done interview with James Ulak, which is part of the Freer and Sackler Galleries podcast series. I'm listening to the podcast as I write this and it has a great deal of depth and breadth, touching on many subjects. You can either subscribe to the podcasts or choose one to listen to.

[July 3, 2008 - The webpage for a companion exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum has disappeared]
[August 4, 2009 - The Hirshhorn podcast episodes for the Sugimoto exhibit are still available. If not on this page, then on the very last page of the podcast listing.]

While looking at the Hirshhorn site, I was reminded that I had seen much better images somewhere else. So I Googled until I found the PBS Art:21 page for this artist. There you will find videos, and, under 'Artist Pages', the 'Artwork Survey' link which leads to slideshows with much larger reproductions of Sugimoto's art

Both the Freer/Sackler and the Hirshhorn shows were reviewed in the New York Times in September of 2005; you can read the review here.

Modernism at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Another museum with an impressive online presence is the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It also has a ‘Modernism’ site, separated by location and time period. Images, which can be nicely enlarged, are accompanied by text with links to further information.

There are extensive resources on the Institute’s site, so clicking around the home page is rewarding, once you discover where the art is located. Current exhibitions don’t always have accompanying online content, but some do. The real richness of resources is found under the ‘Explore the Collection’ section and in the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program Wiki. The augmented exhibitions go back to 2000 as of this viewing, and it looks like content is meant to be added back to 1975.

Modernism: Designing a new world 1914-1939 - Victoria and Albert Museum

Although you may see "Exhibition Now Closed" stamped on the Victoria and Albert Museum's Modernism: Designing a new world 1914-1939 site, it is still open online in both html and Flash format. Watch for videos which accompany some images - how else would you get to see an alphabet dance?

In the Flash version, you can create your own Modernist poster, among other adventures, and have it displayed as part of the exhibit. Each version has its own good and bad points (mostly good as far as I’m concerned, although I prefer the html format for reading text) so it’s worthwhile to explore both.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is one of those museums that provide enriched content for the online viewer, especially under Collections. Today (or at least on the day that I saw it), in the ‘Textiles’ section, there is an exhibit by the Artist in Residence, Sue Lawty. In this section, as in others, there are also videos, booklists, and much more.