New English Language access to the Louvre's collections!

Very exciting new online research resource for Art Historians!

NEW YORK, NY.- The Musée du Louvre today announced that it will launch an English version of its online collections database, Atlas, on July 30, 2009. This interactive research tool will allow visitors to access information on 22,000 artworks from the Louvre, view high-resolution images of masterpieces, and locate exhibited works and galleries throughout the Museum.

The whole article on Artdaily.org

and the link directly to the Louvre's new site:
The Louvre in English

Fantastic new museum website

The Chicago Institute of Art has launched a wonderful new interactive program that will change the way viewers experience the museum, both from the web and while in the building. The Virtual Tour allows a complete experience of the galleries before ever arriving to see the works in person.

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=32228

What do you think--will digital projects like this change the way museums are used? Will less people go to museums to see art if they can see it at home? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Teaching Today's College Students

Here's a thought for everyone about college learning:

this is a video from the Lily Conference, a leading group of educators who come together to discuss issues about Higher Education.



I'd love to hear student's thoughts on how the issues raised by this video affect the SNC community--comment or email me at eomalley@sierranevada.edu

Hockney iPhone Paintings

David Hockney has been using the iPhone "Brushes" app to make morning sketches. Three of those sketches are available for download for the next couple days, as a tie-in with a BBC documentary on Hockney, here.

A recent New Yorker cover was also painted with "Brushes" (Chuck Levitan was kind enough to hep me to that fact via email a few weeks ago) -- visit the "Brushes" link above for more info.

CCAI: Grad Night

I can't hope to do a better job of summarizing the Capital City Art Initiative's current show, "Grad Night," than Brett M. Van Hoesen did. Hoesen is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at UNR, and her essay on the show is here. The show itself features work by recent graduates of the Art Departments of both Sierra Nevada College and UNR, and runs at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery through September 2. The exhibiting artists are Bryan Christiansen, Aimee Doran, Jeff Erickson, Jonathan Farber, Jonah Harjer, Ahren Hertel, Christina Lee, Jocelyn Meggait, James Nagel, Dominique Palladino and Melissa Swanson. Here are a few pics I snapped at the reception:

FANTASTIC interactive on Cambodian Art

Today I am all excited about this gorgeous new interactive by National Geographic exploring Angkor Wat. NatGeo published some of the best graphics of the site in the 1980's and now they have outdone themselves:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/07/angkor/angkor-animation

Nada Dada Motel

For those of you who don't already know about the Nada Dada Motel event happening in Reno this weekend, check it out at the link below. Some good friends, and great talent, perform/exhibit at this event, which is accidentally in its third year at the El Cortez Motel downtown. If you go, leave your squeamish, prudish, dull, traditional, and conservative sides at home:

http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=1016226

Pop-up

Click here to see some examples of Thomas Allen's Book Art Photography -- it's very clever stuff. He uses photography to freeze 3-D collages, so that book covers can talk directly to other book covers:

Through the Windo

Here's a link to a great new interactive game/environment called WINDOSiLL. It was created by Patrick Smith, who has been making interactive animated environments in Flash for some time now; I included his "Vector Park" work in a show of animation I curated for the Ottawa International Animation Festival back in 2003.


The game presents a very meditative experience. There is a goal, where you progress from one screen to another, but there's no urgency to get on to the next thing; part of the pleasure of the game is to dawdle, and explore the strange doodads and creatures that inhabit each environment. Part of what's effective about WINDOSiLL is the way it introduces its own logic to the player. What's even better is the overarching sense of mystery that permeates everything-- there are suggestions of deep and probably fundamentally inexplicable cosmologies lurking behind the images and facades. Over the course of the game, Smith lightly tips his hat to Bosch, Magritte, Brueghel, Rube Goldberg, and Dr. Seuss.

You can play the first half of the game for free; I plunked down the three bucks to play the remainder of the game, and it was money well-spent.

Patrick Smith's sketchbook blog is located here, and you can see WINDOSiLL sketches and tests here.

Becca's Neanderthal's Monsters

Becca Jane recently posted up a stop-motion animation on her blog -- here it is:



It gave me flashes of both Martha Colburn (who I had the pleasure of meeting at the Ottawa Animation Festival many moons ago) and Ladislas Starevich.