The Peterson Museum (basically the Louvre of automobiles) did the same -or very close- with wonderful video tours of areas that only paying 150$ would get you to see (The Vault).
The Seattle flight museum also started a series where the main curator would talk about individual planes in long format, way better experience than looking at photos online.
The Tank Museum (formerly Bovington Tank Museum) is also doing a long-running series of "tank chats" on their exhibits. They don't only give some very interesting details (if you're into that sort of thing) but also give some deep historical context behind the vehicles.
Thanks for the links, absolutely great channels. I wonder if there exist something like curated "awesome list" of museums online? Because I don't even think it's possible to find these gems just doing a search on Google/YouTube which returns mostly low quality to spam results.
I made a list of museums, galleries and libraries that make their collections available in the public domain with high resolution downloads. A lot of places, even if their collections are out of copyright only have low resolution images available.
And maybe some meta data about the camera and settings.
I don't recall any online collections using targets. Surely these curation and archivist domain experts record this stuff. I've casually asked a few times, but no leads.
--
My partner likes to create master copies. Portrait, still life.
I've ordered fine art prints of dozens of originals. Always frustrating. I just get one of every option (matte, gloss, each type of medium). And let my partner pick the one that seems to match most closely. (Then I give away the extras as 'just because' gifts, which people seem to like.)
if you look at the terms and conditions for downloading, as with most museums, it's clear that they want to still sell prints and "licensing" images of any art they own
they definitely have color-calibrated images, but not for the public
edit: for those unaware, in the US, reproductions/photos of public domain 2D art are themselves public domain and not subject to copyright
We've definitely ordered prints directly. At best, they've been IKEA poster quality. Might as well just use Kinkos.
There's a modest niche opportunity for a high end print shop to just handle it. White label the service so museums can reskin, rebrand, integrate.
I pitched the notion to the two local shops I use (high end, preferred by artists). Build relations with some museums, create a simple e-commerce site. No interest. I get it; Print is a dying industry and the old farts are just holding on until retirement.
I'm happy to pay real money for real prints. I hate fussing with this stuff and being responsible for the results. While I wrote software for print production manufacturing, I never touched the color calibration stuff. I'm just not temperamentally suited for that kind of work.
FWIW, the best source of true color images, for doing master copies, have been art coffee books from the 80s and 90s. When the print industry was basically printing money, some publishers took quality seriously.
You can also request free high-res TIFF files with colour reference for professional use. To order TIFF files, please fill in the form below.
Nice. Hopefully this becomes the norm.
Just one anecdote: During a VIP tour of a museum, eg browsing the warehouse of stuff not on display, I asked about digital archiving. Blank looks. I'm guessing it's just not part of the curriculum for minting new archivists, curators, historians. I hope I'm wrong. Surely the younger cohorts know this stuff...?
Where do you get these printed? I've searched for places that will do high quality prints and generally have come up empty handed. Maybe it's just something that must be done locally?
Recently the Amsterdam Rijks Museum made their collection available via API, which I used to create website which will show you a random artwork on each button press:
I know this potentially sounds ungrateful, but it’s a shame they didn’t follow the example of Paris Musées and place their collection under CC0. [1] As it is it’s really useful for attribution and generalised research, but it doesn’t give you many options for reuse.
The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs published on the collections website representing works that are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the “Photographs”) are permitted, free of charge, for any non-collective use within a strictly private context and for the following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and educational purposes:
- projection and distribution for the purpose of museographic, pedagogic and scientific activities, such as their reproduction on labels and exhibition signs, the presentation of guided tours, the running of educational workshops, the delivery of teaching and training sessions and the holding of symposia and seminars;
- publication of exhibition and permanent collection catalogues, scientific papers and Ph.D. theses for publishers whose registered office is in the European Union, within a limit of one thousand five hundred (1500) copies, republication included:
- digital scientific and educational publications.
It is more permisive than I expected it would be, frankly.
The works themselves are all in the public domain, apart perhaps from rare exceptions.
So my understanding is that it is the photographs of those works that are copyrighted. In my view it goes against the spirit of public domain to use this in order to restrict the use of the collections put online.
However, I think the laws for this vary quite a bit across countries, and in many countries the photograph is considered a new copyright work. In general it's pretty frustrating how many legal barriers there are to accessing and reusing old works of art. Thankfully a growing number of museums have made things easy with clear copyright releases (Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the MET), but others seem more interested in preserving their ability to sell prints.
I'm puzzled by this statement on the Mona Lisa entry [1]: "Artwork recovered after World War II, retrieved by the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés; to be returned to its rightful owner once they have been identified. Online records of all MNR (‘National Museums Recovery’) works can be found on the French Ministry of Culture’s Rose Valland database."
Does anybody know how World War II affected ownership in this case, considering by the time Louis XIV [edited, thanks julienchastang] died (1715) the painting was already in the Palace of Versailles? [2]
It's because that one is a copy of the original (still old, but ~100 years posterior to Da Vinci's).
According to https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00265 its last known owner was Friedrich Welz, an Austrian gallery owner, so the work must have come to Paris postwar to figure out whether it needed to be restituted to a previous owner.
It's underwhelming in real life, very small, dimly lit, under thick glass, teeming with tourists.
Online art is a great endeavor but there's no context for art without the space in which it lives, and in this I think the Musée d'Orsay is the better space.
Sorry, just to clarify. "The" Mona Lisa - or at least the picture presented as such - in the Louvre, in Paris, is not the actual picture but a later copy by a different artist?
There's nothing on Wikipedia suggesting that, based on a skim, it says:
>It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre, Paris since 1797.[10] //
In the past year, quite a few collections went online. I remember seeing that Van Gogh collection from Dutch museums was digitized and released recently. Does anyone know if there's a list of various online art collections? I'd really like to go through some.
This is a tangential point, but I've recently noticed that I discover a lot of art through wikipedia. Many pages that deal with abstract concepts are illustrated with wonderful and varied selections of art, e.g.
That is indeed beautiful but also a sad reminder that current copyright systems have frozen this situation in time - we can only ever use antique art freely in this way, and all recent art is locked behind pseudo-immortal copyright terms.
Not really. NFTs give 'ownership' to things that were already online and widely shared, sometimes for decades (first tweet, nayan cat gif).
The Louvre can still NFT all the images as they please at millions for each one. If anything, it makes it easier now that people can start valuing the items before deciding to make a 'purchase' vs the museum starting auctions immediately.
I know you’re joking but lots of people still struggle with the reason why NFTs exist, including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber. But it seems he finally understood it now thanks to this article: https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gi...
That explains why original signed artworks are valuable, not really why NFTs are valuable
after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner
It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
> The most expensive autograph ever sold as of the writing of this essay is John Lennon’s signature on a copy of Double Fantasy that he signed the day he died. It fetched $900,000 at auction in 2010.
People imho buy the "uniqueness" of an item. This is why a poster of "the Kiss" by Klimt costs $10 and the original costs a $gazillion. The article mentions an autograph of Lennon. Not just any autograph, but one on the day he died. That means "no more after that". Maybe one will resurface, but
A friend who is a painter was telling me that one of the reasons painters become famous after death is because they don't dilute the value of their works by creating more. Imagine they paint one bridge, and it is great! Someone buys it for $10k. Then they go ahead and paint 50 more bridges. Now they will sell for 2k. So the $10k-buyer just got screwed. And we don't know if one day thay paint 50 more bridges, or that was it (dilution ends).
Now, she could be a bit bitter because she wasn't selling as high as she would wish, but she does make a good point.
Readit News
https://www.youtube.com/user/PetersenMuseum/videos
The Seattle flight museum also started a series where the main curator would talk about individual planes in long format, way better experience than looking at photos online.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCda1wjNf7JaYgx9ukXRqgIQ
Those are just the ones I noticed as an Aviation and Automobile enthusiast. If anyone knows others please share ;_;
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAEOsdxIbLPFEomzphaZ...
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTankMuseum
https://www.kevan.tv/articles/the-best-sites-for-public-doma...
https://artsandculture.google.com
https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2020/04/16/things-to-do-...
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_Ftxa2jwg8R4IWDw48uyBw
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/163309-REG/Kodak_1907...
And maybe some meta data about the camera and settings.
I don't recall any online collections using targets. Surely these curation and archivist domain experts record this stuff. I've casually asked a few times, but no leads.
--
My partner likes to create master copies. Portrait, still life.
I've ordered fine art prints of dozens of originals. Always frustrating. I just get one of every option (matte, gloss, each type of medium). And let my partner pick the one that seems to match most closely. (Then I give away the extras as 'just because' gifts, which people seem to like.)
they definitely have color-calibrated images, but not for the public
edit: for those unaware, in the US, reproductions/photos of public domain 2D art are themselves public domain and not subject to copyright
There's a modest niche opportunity for a high end print shop to just handle it. White label the service so museums can reskin, rebrand, integrate.
I pitched the notion to the two local shops I use (high end, preferred by artists). Build relations with some museums, create a simple e-commerce site. No interest. I get it; Print is a dying industry and the old farts are just holding on until retirement.
I'm happy to pay real money for real prints. I hate fussing with this stuff and being responsible for the results. While I wrote software for print production manufacturing, I never touched the color calibration stuff. I'm just not temperamentally suited for that kind of work.
FWIW, the best source of true color images, for doing master copies, have been art coffee books from the 80s and 90s. When the print industry was basically printing money, some publishers took quality seriously.
You can also request free high-res TIFF files with colour reference for professional use. To order TIFF files, please fill in the form below.
Nice. Hopefully this becomes the norm.
Just one anecdote: During a VIP tour of a museum, eg browsing the warehouse of stuff not on display, I asked about digital archiving. Blank looks. I'm guessing it's just not part of the curriculum for minting new archivists, curators, historians. I hope I'm wrong. Surely the younger cohorts know this stuff...?
Has anyone ever raised copyright concerns?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giclée
We just tried all the local ones we could find. Then did repeat business with the one who was easiest to work with, did the best job.
You should ask for your money back.
More seriously, I first browsed the textile & inscription images, guessing they'd most likely have color targets.
https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010000055
As you can see, they do have scales (of course).
I know nothing about archiving, archeology, history. I'm just guessing that color calibration would be crucial to their studies.
I think you can infer white balance from those scales. And because they're two toned, maybe some of the gamut too?
Not using a proper color target just seems like a missed opportunity.
https://randomrijks.com
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
[1] https://creativecommons.org/2020/01/10/paris-musees-releases...
The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs published on the collections website representing works that are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the “Photographs”) are permitted, free of charge, for any non-collective use within a strictly private context and for the following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and educational purposes: - projection and distribution for the purpose of museographic, pedagogic and scientific activities, such as their reproduction on labels and exhibition signs, the presentation of guided tours, the running of educational workshops, the delivery of teaching and training sessions and the holding of symposia and seminars; - publication of exhibition and permanent collection catalogues, scientific papers and Ph.D. theses for publishers whose registered office is in the European Union, within a limit of one thousand five hundred (1500) copies, republication included: - digital scientific and educational publications.
It is more permisive than I expected it would be, frankly.
So my understanding is that it is the photographs of those works that are copyrighted. In my view it goes against the spirit of public domain to use this in order to restrict the use of the collections put online.
However, I think the laws for this vary quite a bit across countries, and in many countries the photograph is considered a new copyright work. In general it's pretty frustrating how many legal barriers there are to accessing and reusing old works of art. Thankfully a growing number of museums have made things easy with clear copyright releases (Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the MET), but others seem more interested in preserving their ability to sell prints.
Does anybody know how World War II affected ownership in this case, considering by the time Louis XIV [edited, thanks julienchastang] died (1715) the painting was already in the Palace of Versailles? [2]
[1] https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066723
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
According to https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00265 its last known owner was Friedrich Welz, an Austrian gallery owner, so the work must have come to Paris postwar to figure out whether it needed to be restituted to a previous owner.
The original Joconde is https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010062370
https://www.artcuriouspodcast.com/artcuriouspodcast/1
It's underwhelming in real life, very small, dimly lit, under thick glass, teeming with tourists.
Online art is a great endeavor but there's no context for art without the space in which it lives, and in this I think the Musée d'Orsay is the better space.
There's nothing on Wikipedia suggesting that, based on a skim, it says:
>It had been believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic itself, on permanent display at the Louvre, Paris since 1797.[10] //
I'm guessing I've misunderstood??
Edit: Van Gogh collection: https://vangoghworldwide.org
There is the OpenGLAM Survey, a list of Galleres, Libraries, Archives, and Museum sharing their collections under open licenses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yc8z0z7XdhVKvhTbD2_z...
Then there are also aggregators like dp.la, cultural.jp, digitalnz.org, europeana.eu etc that might also be of interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justicehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
The $1000 iPhone app [2008] https://kottke.org/08/08/the-1000-iphone-app
> Server error. Continue to search the Louvre collections
The Louvre can still NFT all the images as they please at millions for each one. If anything, it makes it easier now that people can start valuing the items before deciding to make a 'purchase' vs the museum starting auctions immediately.
[0] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/03/26/rusher-nfts
after all if I wanted to buy a Jack Dorsey signature tweet for two million dollars or a Beeple collage for 70 million I'm sure Beeple would have gladly put it on a usb stick, signed me a card, printed it billboard sized and driven it to my house while taking me out for a steak dinner
It's absolutely nebulous what the 'digital' part adds.
People imho buy the "uniqueness" of an item. This is why a poster of "the Kiss" by Klimt costs $10 and the original costs a $gazillion. The article mentions an autograph of Lennon. Not just any autograph, but one on the day he died. That means "no more after that". Maybe one will resurface, but
A friend who is a painter was telling me that one of the reasons painters become famous after death is because they don't dilute the value of their works by creating more. Imagine they paint one bridge, and it is great! Someone buys it for $10k. Then they go ahead and paint 50 more bridges. Now they will sell for 2k. So the $10k-buyer just got screwed. And we don't know if one day thay paint 50 more bridges, or that was it (dilution ends).
Now, she could be a bit bitter because she wasn't selling as high as she would wish, but she does make a good point.
Huh? Isn't it obvious? They exist because some people have more money than sense.
>including Apple’s unofficial PR department John Gruber
Edgy. Do you also spell that Seattle-based OS company with a dollar sign for the S?
Money laundering.