Want to see Trajan's Column, Michelangelo’s David (with or without fig leaf), and Notre Dame all in one room? (Well, two rooms.) The Victoria and Albert’s “Cast Courts” are an amazing example of Victorian plaster casting, allowing those who couldn't afford the Grand Tour a chance to see great works of art and architecture.
posted by JoanArkham on Oct 26, 2009 - 22 comments

In these difficult economic times, what's a museum to do? Is an art collection a financial asset or a trust to be held in perpetuity? These questions are being raised by The National Academy in New York's recent sale (or "deaccessioning" in museum lingo) of two important paintings for $15 million to shore up its finances, first reported by Lee Rosenbaum's ArtsJournal blog. The museum's director told The New York Times that it was the only way for the 183-year-old academy, which runs a chronic operating deficit, to survive. The Association of Art Museum Directors censured the Academy and called on its members to suspend any loans of art to the institution. New York lawyer Donn Zaretzky's ArtLaw Blog has become ground zero for a fascinating debate involving art critics, museum directors, financial bloggers and others.
posted by up in the old hotel on Jan 7, 2009 - 40 comments

In 2006 in the Fitzwilliam Museum three enormous porcelain vases from seventeenth or eighteenth century China were smashed by a museum visitor who fell down the stairs. This presentation "follows the vases' progress from scattered fragments to their redisplay in the Fitzwilliam Museum. The site includes slideshows, film clips of the conservation process and a timelapse of one of the vases under reconstruction". [more inside]
posted by paduasoy on May 5, 2008 - 20 comments

Visual Arts: No Revolution in Hyperspace "A former insider laments the dumbing down of art museum websites." Nice, short overview of art museums and the web with good links.
posted by Miko on Mar 4, 2008 - 13 comments

Netsuke of the Meiji Period is an online exhibit from the Los Angeles County Museum, noted for the depth of its collection. (more). The György Ráth Museum and the Ferenc Hopp Museum also house a fine classic collection. (more). Today, netsuke carving is alive and well - see the Kiho Collection for one young master. If you would like to explore more sculpture for the hand, the International Netsuke Society has a good link list to many excellent contemporary netsuke artists.
posted by madamjujujive on Jan 6, 2008 - 14 comments

An unexpected treasure trove online... The audioguides for Rome's city museums are available as mp3s! Not only can you find guides to one of the oldest public museums in the world, the Capitoline Museums, but you can also hear several commentaries (including video) on the ancient Roman Altar of Augustan Peace, and download the audioguide of both the Barracco Museum of Ancient Sculpture, and that of the Museum of Rome. Download them before you go and save 5 euros at each museum, but they're *invaluable* even if you listen to them from home! Enjoy!!
posted by Misciel on Jul 26, 2007 - 7 comments

"On September 30, 2006, for one day only, museums across the country will join the Smithsonian Institution in its long-standing tradition of offering free admission to visitors."
posted by moss on Sep 28, 2006 - 29 comments

DADA Hits the MOMA. DaDaism was an art movement that arose prior to the rubble of WW1 where the artists led a creative revolution that shaped the course of modern art by combining different mediums to create a message of protest and hope. The MOMA exhibit tells one story (scroll to data and select full program - req flash 7) and the New Yorker reaffirms the influence on art today. However, the real story is with Richard Huelsenbeck, the ring leader and founder of the DaDa movement An interview with him from December 1960 (45 mins mp3) explains the start - as one of the few German artists in protest to the war. My favourite part is where he tells of picking out the name DaDa from an encyclopedia at a cabaret.
posted by Funmonkey1 on Jul 19, 2006 - 23 comments

William Blake's Grave. Museums and galleries only have a few weeks left to save William Blake’s long-lost watercolour illustrations accompanying Robert Blair’s poem “The Grave”, before they are dispersed at auction in New York on 2 May.
posted by matteo on Mar 17, 2006 - 25 comments

Perspectives of Russian Art Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 Americans had limited opportunities to view Russian art of the 20th century. The political pressures of the Cold War era resulted in the mutual cultural isolation of Russia from western Europe and the United States that also created an atmosphere of aesthetic mystery regarding Russian art . .
posted by hortense on Jan 24, 2006 - 23 comments

World Art Treasures :What is essential in my approach consists of not "letting the others profit," as is too often thought, but to PROFIT ALONG WITH OTHERS from the dual experience of my studies and travel, sharing the emotions of my discoveries and encounters, to maintain faith in this miracle that is life. J-E Berger .
posted by hortense on Dec 21, 2005 - 2 comments

Sir John Soane (1753-1837) was responsible for the design of quite a few of London’s public buildings (and to some extent, its phonebooths). His home, now a museum, is filled to the brim with architectural relics, sculptures, paintings, drawings, stained glass, and assorted curiosities. Almost unchanged since his death, it also contains the gravesite of his wife’s beloved dog Fanny, a mummified rat, an Egyptian sarcophagus, and an imaginary monk named Padre Giovanni. Best of all, on the first Tuesday of every month the museum has a candlelight tour which enhances the spooky splendor of the rooms.
posted by annaramma on Dec 15, 2005 - 18 comments

The ransack of Italy is finally becoming big news. The Getty had a reputation for buying Italian antiquities of "uncertain provenance". It recently returned some treasures, but has remained in the market; it also kept the Morgantina Aphrodite. But, perhaps, not for much longer. Marion True, a senior curator there, has just been indicted by the Italian authorities "on criminal charges involving the acquisition of precious antiquities".
posted by andrew cooke on May 20, 2005 - 10 comments

Painted beehive panels (accompanying article here) from the Museum of Apiculture [virtual tour, flash] in Radovljica, Slovenia.
posted by Wolfdog on Apr 15, 2005 - 15 comments

MoMA Free Tomorrow for New York MeFi Readers! Well, everyone, actually. The Museum of Modern Art in New York reopens tomorrow and graciously offers a day of free entrance for all. Your chance to avoid the much-criticized $20 admission (views: con, pro-fessional, mayoral). Even good old free-admission Fridays bear the price tag of aggressive name-branding [paragraph 6] by an image-crazy donor (it's not charity anymore if it's advertising, folks, much less design-heady classiness-by-association). Some reports (scroll) from the press preview.
posted by Joe Hutch on Nov 19, 2004 - 20 comments

While trying to find anything about Japp Drupsteen's odd video piece Hyster Pulsatu (which I saw years ago on the sadly defunct Alive from off Center aka Alive TV and badly want to see again) I came across the site of the Netherlands Media art Institute Montevide/Time Based Arts collection. Quite an interesting catalogue, with many samples. No consumer releases, though they do rent tapes and discs for institutional screenings.
posted by PinkStainlessTail on Nov 9, 2004 - 1 comment

CGFA - A Virtual Art Museum.
posted by hama7 on Jul 26, 2004 - 2 comments

"Time passes, or rather doesn't pass. It is just there, solid as a coffee mug on the diner's counter. Time hangs like the reek of old tobacco in the hotel furniture". We all think we know Edward Hopper's images, even if we've never seen his paintings. Somehow the solidity of the world -- even the sky is like a wall -- is at odds with the transience of the people in it, however long they sit and stand and wait. Hopper's people, like Manet's figures, often appear consumed by the irreducible business of being. Hopper, too, would descend into his own silences, would delay himself in self-doubt... (more inside)
posted by matteo on May 25, 2004 - 19 comments

Insecula. As the Wiki says:

Insecula: L'encyclopédie des arts et de l'architecture is a French language art website containing images and descriptions of thousands of works of art from major museums and collections in France and elsewhere, including the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Palace of Versailles, the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MOMA.

But it's not just museums and art. It's got Mayan ruins, Manhattan and Brooklyn, and of course lots of Paris streets. I can't believe plep hasn't posted this already...
posted by languagehat on Apr 10, 2004 - 12 comments

Scicult: bridging science & culture through contemporary art.
posted by hama7 on Oct 25, 2003 - 5 comments

Daniel Rozin makes mirrors. But not the boring ones we're used to -- he prefers to make his out of wood, trash and occassionally, shiny balls. His works are a combination of artistic expression and computer vision, and have been on display around the world. Check out the quicktime videos of his mirrors in action and prepare your mind to be boggled. [via cool/lame]
posted by krunk on Oct 21, 2003 - 12 comments

They Still Draw Pictures. Drawings made by children during the Spanish Civil War.
posted by plep on Oct 17, 2003 - 10 comments

The On-Line Picasso Project offers 6,893 works for your ogling pleasure, plus an obsessively documented chronological bio. I'm stunned. (please read the user's manual, inside.)
posted by taz on Oct 2, 2003 - 12 comments

Red-Haired Barbarians: The Dutch and Othe Foreigners in Nagasaki and Yokohama 1800-1865
posted by hama7 on Mar 30, 2003 - 9 comments

Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle Multimedia artist Matthew Barney, 36, is almost universally fawned over by critics and is hailed as the most important artist to come along in years. In a stunning installation at NYC's Guggenheim Museum, he's made the museum into a bit player in his massive gesamtkunstwerk. And now this gorgeous website ups the ante on Flash-based sites. In addition to all this, the soundtracks from his Cremaster series by Jonathan Bepler are breaking new ground in modern composition. Oh, yeah, Matthew Barney is the dad of Bjork's child. Where does it end?
posted by ubueditor on Mar 17, 2003 - 27 comments

Celebrity Caricature in America. The website of a 1998 exhibition at the (US) National Portrait Gallery. Via the National Portrait Gallery's online exhibitions, where there are even more fine things.
posted by plep on Feb 10, 2003 - 6 comments

Museums in Japan: 387 total. Many in English.
posted by hama7 on Oct 17, 2002 - 22 comments

In a way, his works are like a butterfly collection - a vain attempt to capture fleeting, elusive life and beauty, by meticulous means. Joseph Cornell (1903-72), one of many misunderstood and underrepresented american artists IMO. A few of his boxes on WebMuseum.
posted by poopy on Sep 13, 2002 - 11 comments

Rijksmuseum: Many of the paintings of this famous Dutch museum can now be viewed online.
posted by justlooking on Feb 16, 2002 - 10 comments

Italy privatizes its culture. At least that's what will happen when a bill turning management of all of its museums sails through the Parliament this week. Critics of the Berlesconi-driven measure say that trying to turn culture into a profit center is foolish as there are only a few attractions that make any money now.
posted by MAYORBOB on Dec 8, 2001 - 4 comments

I MUST go see this exhibit in San Francisco. If I had to choose my favorite artistic medium, and the greatest practitioner of that medium, it would be the amazing black and white landscape photos by Ansel Adams.
posted by msacheson on Aug 3, 2001 - 11 comments

What's your favorite museum and why?
posted by christina on Jul 20, 2001 - 40 comments

Despite major American museums' and academia's unwillingness to host his Palestine Poster Project, Dan Walsh has continued for 20 years on his quest to educate Americans about the Palestinian culture and cause with his collection of 3,200 original Palestinian solidarity posters. He has posted about a hundred of them in the online gallery at his Liberation Graphics website. He also has a fascinating collection of Che Guevera posters as part of his Cuba Poster Project.
posted by tamim on May 3, 2001 - 1 comment

If anyone is (or will be) in New York and have nothing else planned for this evening, may I suggest a trip to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. BMA is free on every first saturday of the month (from 5 PM - 11 PM). Today's theme for the evening entertainment revolves around their special exhibition, Hip-Hop Nation: Roots, Rhymes and Rage. There will be an outdoor dance party (at the BMA parking lot) starting at 9 PM featuring samples from 20 years of Hip-Hop music. You can also walk through their current exhibitions, of which the Robots and Space Toys seems promising.
posted by tamim on Oct 7, 2000 - 5 comments