Fulcrum by Richard Serra, London, England
NY Times Arts Dwell ARTstor Blog
1931, High-speed train (zeppelin on wheels)
The German Federal Archive donated nearly 100,000 images in the public domain to Wikimedia Commons. The photographs document the political and personal lives of Germans over the course of the twentieth century. Examples of the built environment – religious, domestic, civic and industrial – are also included.
The BBC has announced that by 2012, it will have posted online an image of every one of the 200,000 oil paintings in Britain’s national collection. The Public Catalogue Foundation, aiming to increase public access by photographing and recording Brittan’s public art, has already described and annotated 30% of the paintings to be hosted by the BBC. This BBC initiative is one of many new efforts by the organization to increase its support for the arts. Read more here.
Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) hosts a series of free public lectures, broadcast live and online. Upcoming lectures include UC Santa Barbara professor Curtis Roads explication of his “microsound” compositions and the intersection of sound and space; architect and theorists Peter Macapia’s lecture “The Smell of Geometry” will investigate the meaning of geometry in a digital and automated age and Los Angeles architect Eric Owen Moss will discuss his recent work in Culver City. Some of the other rich and varied topics covered by SCI-Arc’s public programming include the interaction of graphic design and architecture, urban planning, and algorithmic design. Archived content can be viewed here.
ARTstor has collaborated with the Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives, to make available more than 14,000 images of Ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Early Christian and Byzantine art. Currently 9,000 images are available online. Erich Lessing photographed art works and buildings, including many European museums, as well as landscapes and political events in the Post-Soviet Bloc. He worked for the Associated Press and was a member of Magnum Photos.
OpenStreetMap is collaborative project and a wiki-style map of the world that allows you to view, edit and use geographical data. The data are gathered from out-of-copyright maps, aerial photography, and surveys done by individuals with GPS units.
Google Earth has incorporated into its virtual globe a selection of fourteen masterpieces from the Museo del Prado’s collection, including the “Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch and Diego Velázquez’ “Las Meninas,” as well as a three dimensional depiction of the museum. Images are restoration-quality and 1,400 times clearer than what can be rendered with a 10-megapixel camera. Scrutinize brushstrokes and varnish cracks – details you were once only able to see while standing on a ladder with your face pressed to the canvas.
Google has incorporated full-text magazines, including New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics and Dwell, into Google Books Search.
Carlos Theatre, San Carlos
The papers of S. Charles Lee, a prolific designer of Art Deco movie theaters on the west coast and in Mexico, is available online at the UCLA Digital Library. “Lee considered himself a modernist, and his career revealed both the Beaux Arts discipline and emphasis on planning and the modernist functionalism and freedom of form. He was also a pragmatist, designing his buildings to support and enhance the commercial ventures they housed.”(http://digital.library.ucla.edu/sclee/lee_bio.htm)
The online collection includes drawings and photographs of his designs, including images of drinking fountains, diners, marques, murals, and apartments.
The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has developed a new service called ticTOCs that provides free RSS feeds to 11,864 Scholarly Journal table of contents (TOC) pages, including many architecture and planning journals.
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