MetaFilter posts tagged with museum and exhibition

Open-source online exhibit platform

Miko — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:40:31 -0800

Omeka is a newly available, open-source web platform, bringing good-looking, functional online exhibitry within reach of smaller museums, libraries, and arts groups. From the Center for History and New Media.

Amazing map exhibition

LobsterMitten — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:48:27 -0800

Maps: Finding our place in the world is an exhibit at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and it runs until this Sunday June 8. That page contains images of a few of the maps. One of the many great things included is an animated map of the US Civil War in 4 minutes (one week per second, timeline noted at bottom, casualty counter rolling in bottom right corner - info about this animation) The exhibition book was previously linked here; that site includes higher-resolution versions of some more of the maps. I was floored by all the stuff they have; in terms of the rarity of the stuff in it, and the geek-delight factor, I think it's probably the best gallery show I've ever seen. The show includes: maps made by Davinci, Geo Washington, Thos Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, Cortes, and others; the first geologic map; the 1982 first map of ARPAnet, a map of the distribution of whales in the Atlantic in the late 1700s commissioned by Ben Franklin; a Marshall islands stick map; a carved nubbly chunk of wood carved into a map of the coast of Greenland; maps sewn onto silk by medieval Mediterranean sailors; Japanese, Indian, medieval European pilgrimage maps; maps made by indigenous people on every inhabited continent; the first relief map; the chart Charles Lindbergh used on his transAtlantic flight; the map that settled the boundary of the US at the surrender at Yorktown; Lewis and Clark's map; the map that historians think is the oldest city map, on a clay tablet from Sumeria; demographic and experimental maps from the social consciousness movements of the late 19th c; the Minard map of Napoleon's Russian campaign (so praised by Edward Tufte); the first Mercator projection map; maps of fictional places made by Tolkien, Frank Baum, and others; and on and on. The show includes images from the Hubble telescope and local artists' alternative mappings of Baltimore, too. If you are interested in maps, history, or information design at all you should try to see this show; it is just breathtaking. The exhibit was organized by the Field Museum in Chicago, and was shown there first. I don't know if it's going to visit other cities; I believe I read something suggesting it wasn't, but I can't find confirmation of that now.

Lego meta-art?

funambulist — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:11:44 -0800

The next Turner Prize winners? Art Craziest Nation is a mini-gallery of (in)famous pieces by modern artists, accurately reproduced with Lego by a duo called The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave). The exhibition is at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool until next January. See the Lego version of Damien Hirst's Shark Tank, Tracey Emin's Bed, Jeff Koons' Balls, Andy Warhol's Money, Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, and many others. It's all in one single piece, with some of the artists themselves in Lego version - and others whose work is not exhibited, like Matthew Barney and Gilbert & George - hanging around sipping their Lego wine (ok, air) from Lego cups (or even throwing it at the Lego person standing next to them). Liverpool Football Club star Gerrard also featured in a tribute to the team's victory of this year's European Cup.

plep — Sun, 03 Nov 2002 02:59:53 -0800

Tales from the Land of Dragons. 100 years of Chinese paintings. From the overview :- 'In China, painting is one of the "Three Perfections," linked with calligraphy and poetry as the most refined of artistic endeavors. This exhibition ... focuses on the years in which the great traditions of Chinese painting were established, during the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties ... '