A counter-exhibition with the official sanction of Napoleon III despite his traditional tastes in the arts opened on this day in the Palace of Industry in 1863 with a gallery of the rejected submissions received by the Paris Salon of the Acadรฉmie des Beaux-Arts, relenting to pressure by spurned painters and the public alike, who were finding the acceptance process increasingly fraught and favouring conservatism. Those showing the alternate exposition included many now-famous works by รdouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Johan Jongkind and James McNeill Whistler.
Sunday 15 May 2022
Sunday 8 May 2022
himmelsscheibe
Monday 25 April 2022
san marco
Variously identified as the cousin of Barnabas and textually as the anonymous water-bearer of the Last Supper and the Naked Fugitive during Jesus' arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (see also), the Mark the Evangelist, fรชted on this day, would go on to author one of the gospels—by traditional accounts—and to found the episcopal See of Alexandria, among the most important of early Christianity. Sharing the iconography of the winged lion with the saint, he is venerated in Venice as the city’s and thalassocracy’s patron and in Lithuania, where he is regarded as the guardian of the harvest and there is a general fast prescribed as a well as a prohibition on disturbing the earth as to give the land a rest before the planting season begins. 25 April is a national holiday throughout Italy, but not as Saint Mark’s Day and rather as marking the 1945 anniversary of the liberation of the country by the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation and the puppet government of the fascists.
catagories: ☦️, ๐ฎ๐น, ✝️, ๐, libraries and museums, Middle East
Friday 15 April 2022
universal day of culture under the banner of peace
Observed annually on the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments—or short-form the Roerich Pact after its chief sponsor Saint Petersburg painter and philosopher Nicholas Roerich—in Washington, DC on this day in 1935 (incidentally the first international treaty to be signed in the Oval Office, Roerich I think is seated to the left of FDR) with the underpinning idea and legal standing that the defence of cultural heritage and artefacts is above their exploitation as nationalistic or propaganda purposes or wanton destruction and that the protection and preservation of cultural is always more important than military necessity. Lightly influenced by the Neo-Theosophical movement, the signatories’ wish was that this day would be “consecrated to the full appreciation of national and universal treasures” and hoped that it would become a secular catechism to remind us all of “creative heroic enthusiasm, of improvement and enhancement of life” through the edifying arts. The icon is of the artist’s design and has been flown at the poles and the world’s highest peaks and incorporated into the coat of arms of many institutions working towards world peace and conserving the culture of all humanity.
catagories: ๐, ๐จ, ๐, libraries and museums, ⓦ
7x7
who’s in your wallet: personalities and personages on banknotes—via Waxy (who is turning twenty)
simoom: a decade of dust storms
hurrian hymn: paean to Mesopotamian goddess Nikkal is the oldest know surviving work of notated musicfound photos: saved from oblivion and shared—via Things Magazine (plus a lot more to check out)
alphabet truck: the whole ABCs on the backside of lorries captured by Eric Tabuchi—via Pasa Bon!
meme-maker: Dutch national library offers a tool to scour medieval illustrations and marginalia—see also here and here
the colour of money: a survey of banknote hues from the archives
catagories: ๐ช, ๐ถ, ๐ฑ, ๐, ๐ท, libraries and museums, Middle Ages, Middle East, The Simpsons
Friday 1 April 2022
7x7
health officials warn of “second wave” of immersive van gogh exhibitions: symptoms to be on the look out for include a flattening of the artist’s legacy and an intense desire to watch Emily in Paris
a book by its cover: the absurdist collages of Paperback Paradise
match game: flawless digital recreations of classic TV game show sets
111 west 57th street: super tall, slender residential tower tapering from Steinway Hall is an homage to the piano-maker
earendel: the Hubble space telescope images the oldest, most distant star
old dutch master: a series of fifteenth century Flemish style portraits recreated in an airport lavatory—see also—via Things Magazine
achieve hover status—everyone else will want to hover but can’t: an AI (see previously) comes up with pranks to play on the user
Saturday 26 March 2022
see something, spray something
My workplace located in the extended concrete canvas of The Meeting of the Styles (previously) international street artist collective and noticing some of the murals being given a new layer, I took a stroll around Mainz-Kastel through the train depot and some unwalkable places to document some of the expansive graffiti, especially noting those that referenced the district’s Roman connections and the neo-Classical redoubt / reduit bridgehead fortress that’s just across the tracks on the bank of the Rhein from the station. We’ll see if we’re host to a whole new gallery of works soon.
catagories: ๐จ, ๐, Hessen, libraries and museums, Rheinland-Pfalz
Wednesday 23 March 2022
8x8
many years later, as he faced the firing squad, colonel aureliano buendia was to remember that weird folgers commercial where it implied the brother and sister were hooking up: first drafts of the greatest first lines in literature
stories and studies of strange things: the life and legacy of Lafcadio Hearn (ฮ ฮฑฯฯฮฏฮบฮนฮฟฯ ฮฮตฯ ฮบฮฌฮดฮนฮฟฯ ฮงฮตฯฮฝ / ๅฐๆณ ๅ ซ้ฒ) itinerant author and journalist who introduced the Western world to Japancensored: people in Russia are frantically downloading Wikipedia in the wake of the threat of Roskomnadzor to ban it
haunted art: an exhibition of the lingering possession in US museum collections
the rites of spring: an arboreal celebration
frozen chosen: unusual Antarctic ergot
uncanny valley: AI rendered stories read by humans
no set back: great authors on rejection
Saturday 26 February 2022
der hรถllensturz
Whilst on display at the Alte Pinothek in Munich, the artwork The Fall of Damned by Peter Paul Rubens commissioned by the Duke of Pfalz-Neuberg in 1620 (for whom the great Flemish artist had already created the Greater and Lesser Last Judgment) features a jumble of rather Rubenesque figures being hurled to Hell by the Archangel Michael, the painting vandalised on this day in 1959 by a philosophy professor called Walter Menzl, who doused the canvas with wood polish stripping agent. Fortunately the painting could be saved and restored and the defacer turned himself in to the authorities, offering that he had intended to target rather The Four Apostles (that artist’s last major work) of Albrecht Dรผrer for the herostratic fame but decided against it for the religious implications.
catagories: ๐ง๐ช, ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐จ, libraries and museums
Saturday 19 February 2022
๐๐จ
Via the always interesting Web Curios, we are quite impressed with the comprehensive skill demonstrated by a AI museum docent called Digital Curator and its ability to instantly assembly a sizeable exhibition sourced from the collections of institutions in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to explore the evolution of the depiction of an object, artefact or theme across the ages, styles and movements. Of course one can select from a range of parameters and enter one’s own key terms (however disparate and juxtaposed)—or like this gallery generated for the nonce, ask for a random curation. Try it out and be sure to send us an invitation to your showing.
Tuesday 15 February 2022
6x6
taxon: vintage animal family cards
property values: Trump family accounting firm drops them as a client, disavows the validity of a decade’s worth of business assessmentsable baker: a collection of US museum ships—via Things Magazine
daily constitutional: map out one’s lunch-hour ambulations
wobo: Heineken breweries in the early 1960s produced brick-like bottles that could double as construction material, via Messy Nessy Chic
metamates: Facebook staff receive a new official monicker aligned with corporate branding
catagories: ๐ป, ๐️♂️, ๐บ, ๐ฅธ, ๐งฑ, ๐ข, libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Wednesday 2 February 2022
artificial scarcity
Via Hyperalleric, we have another update from Molly White on how great Web 3.0 is going (previously) with this dispatch from a New Zealand auction house that sold material contact prints and plate glass negatives from photographer and portrait artist Charles Fredrick Goldie—whose work is problematic, considered reductive and promoting the contemporary thinking that the Mฤori were on the verge of extinction as a culture and colonial paternalism though also a snapshot of heritage that might be otherwise lost to time—bundled with their NTF, which fetched much higher prices than they could otherwise garner, complete with a small mallet—inviting the winning bidder to smash the plate and render the lot digital only—see also. The sales were of a self-portrait of the artist at his easel and not of historic aboriginal elders so this provocation is not such an afford to museums and the art world, though one suspects that bidding was driven by investment and looking for a place to park one’s money rather than an appreciation for art or the subject matter.
Tuesday 1 February 2022
6x6
anagrams everywhere: the intrusive, obsessive thoughts of a Scrabble enthusiast—via Kottke’s Quick Links—see also
maths hysteria: a celebration of vintage calculator manuals
dishes for luck and prosperity: traditional Lunar New Year cuisine laden with word-play and symbolism
old brown ears is back: a cover album from under-appreciated Muppet character, Rowlf the Dog
nasm: Smithsonian Air & Space museum accepts donation from a tech billionaire—notably absent a “morals clause” which would allow the institution to disassociate itself with their benefactor should their values become misaligned
Sunday 30 January 2022
root directory
A happily reactivated Present /&/ Correct shop blog (do check out their sundries) brings us this interesting series of studies curated by Wageningen University of hand renderings of root systems (see also here and here) of trees and plants whose subterranean presences and connections can be far more substantial and wide-reaching than we surface-dealers can fathom.
catagories: ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐ฑ, ๐ณ, ๐, libraries and museums
Monday 17 January 2022
from inca to excel
Via รon, we quite enjoyed this introduction to the system of knotted fibres called khipu (see also) as an accounting and record-keeping tool of the Wari peoples and spread across the Andean region some fourteen-hundred years ago. Decoded by specially-trained khipukamayuqs, these mobile ledgers were periodically recalled to court authorities to lodge tax-compliance, census numbers, commerce, genealogy and inheritance—and with only a small proportion of museum-holdings deciphered, some holdout the possibility that these data-points were a means to encode the fulness of language.
catagories: ๐, ๐งฎ, ๐งถ, libraries and museums
Monday 10 January 2022
6x6
curiosity cabinet: virtually explore the museum house of Sir John Soane (previously)—via Things Magazine
glitchy terrain: users and clients report bugs in fly-over features (see previously)—via Super Punch
debate club: let’s thrash out these ongoing arguments once and for all
low, heroes, lodger: a look at the Eastern European literature that influenced David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy and beyond
medico-mechanical gymnastics: the nineteenth century work-out regiment of Gustave Zander—see previously
ex libris: a look into some of the great libraries of Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria
catagories: ๐จ๐ค, ๐บ, ๐คธ, libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Friday 7 January 2022
poฤรญtaฤovรก hra
Via Things Magazine, we discover an emulator archive of computer and arcade games created by the Slovak programming community in the late 1980s—available for download in their original versions or as English translations. More at the links above including all exhibits at the National Design Centre in Bratislava.
catagories: ๐ธ๐ฐ, ๐พ, ๐พ, libraries and museums
Tuesday 4 January 2022
6x6
media archive for central england: browse tens of thousands of amateur films—via Things Magazine
el vaquita: a small town in Chile staged a fake protest to persuade a dog to visit the veterinarian—via Super Punchfluid dynamics: cloud waves in the skies of Tenerife
watery fowls: an unaired pilot (see also) for the 1978 US adaptation of Fawlty Towers, starring Betty White and Harvey Korman
different realities: American democracy in crisis—via Miss Cellania
public domain revue: hundreds of thousands of audio recordings made prior to 1923 are free to use as one sees fit
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ค️, ๐ฌ, ๐ถ, libraries and museums
Thursday 30 December 2021
achievable goals
Courtesy of our friend artificial intelligencer and Smithsonian’s designated futurist-in-residence for next month, Janelle Shane (previously here and here) we are treated to a neural network’s attempt at coming up with a New Year’s resolution. With a few prompts, it generated suggestions like, “Make broccoli the national currency and then paint that,” or “take photos of my toes daily,” and intriguingly “act like a cabbage for a month,” “dress in a way that only a ghost could love,” “throw a birthday party for a tree” and “attempt to find peace living with an army of puppets.” More at the link above and see if you can find a resolution that’s particularly resonant for you. “I will now treat every worm I see as if it is an old friend.”
catagories: ๐ , ๐ค, libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Wednesday 22 December 2021
muskelspiel
Born this day in 1867 (†1927) in the village Burkhardtsdorf in the western edge of Upper Lusatia, Osmar Heinrich Volkmar Schindler, demonstrating skill as an artist early on was with the support of his uncle enrolled at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts where after his education in portraiture and travels in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium developed a signature style that mixed elements of Impressionism and Art Nouveau. In 1900, Schindler was invited back to the academy and given a professorship. Better known for his murals and interior decor for both secular and religious buildings of the fin de siรจcle throughout Saxony, works on display include David and Goliath, landscapes of the Sรคchsischen Schweiz and Lake Garda, as well as this muscle-flexing study that has the undivided attention of the art class.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐จ, libraries and museums, Saxony