Held at the New Burlington Galleries off Savile Row in Mayfair from this day through 4 July 1936, the organising committee hosted works from several popular and influential artists of the movement, including Alexander Calder, S. H. Tauber-arp, Victor Brauner, Gala and Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Len Lye, René Magritte and Paul Klee and attracted a thousand visitors per day with Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the US, the UK, New Zealand, Italy, Roumania and Czecho-Slovakia represented and distinguished presenters delivering a series of lectures to large assembled audiences. Salvador Dalí wore a diving helmet whilst giving his seminar on fantômes paranoïaques authentiques and nearly suffocated at the dais and had to be rescued by poet David Gascoyne with a spanner.
Friday 11 June 2021
Wednesday 9 June 2021
plastikbesteck
Informed by the announcement of the EU parliament that from next month on, single-use plastic eating utensils, swizzle sticks, drinking straws, etc. will be banned, a design duo from Germany has exhibited as part of the London Design Biennale an installation called “Spoon Archaeology” of two decades of collected, curated strata—all part of a theme for a pavilion on ecological awareness and sustainability by putting problematic disposables on display as artefacts of the past that they should be consigned to. More from Dezeen at the link above.
catagories: ♻️, 🇪🇺, libraries and museums
Friday 28 May 2021
tbilisoba
We enjoyed exploring the gallery of the visual essay about the endangered Brutalist monuments and buildings of the Georgian capital of Tbilisi (previously here and here) including a quite arresting 1976 of the city’s vocational college bas-relief (nicknamed the Soviet Batman) that fronted one of the main thoroughfares that was slowly and unceremoniously scavenged for scrap metal and now is no more and the better looked after and protected Chronicle of Georgia (საქართველოს ქრონიკები, not to be confused with this other set of pillars), the post-and-lentil colossal structure depicting the culture, history and heroes of Georgia above and Gospel stories and various hagiographies below. Created by Zurab Tsereteli in 1985, a few panels have yet to be completed, the complex commemorates Georgia’s embarking on its fourth millennia and should inspire preservation of all architectural treasures.
catagories: 🇬🇪, 🌍, 🏢, libraries and museums
Monday 10 May 2021
up and atom
Via Present/&/Correct, we are referred to a curated cache Nuclear Engineering Wall Charts and vintage reactor diagrams from the collection of the University of New Mexico. The pictured diagram features the Biblis B Kernkraftwerke (AKW) near Worms, both A and B blocks were closed in March 2011 following the Fukushima and since permanently shut-down and slated for decommissioning. More to explore at the links above.
catagories: ⚛️, 📐, Hessen, libraries and museums
Wednesday 21 April 2021
uncaptioned
The archivists at the US Library of Congress regularly put out campaigns to identify mysterious photographs, with happily an ever-dwindling cache to solve, but there are a few that still defy an engaged public and persons yet at-large. Among the malingerers is this assumptively familiar, famous and iconic image that has accrued a sizeable largess of misidentification and wrong guesses from Joan Jett to The Slits and all manner of duos in between. More puzzles to untangle at the link above and all guesses are welcome.
catagories: 📷, libraries and museums
Tuesday 20 April 2021
the long and the short of it
We enjoyed this grand tour of the continent through superlative toponymy—with of course the crowning achievement for the longest placename being a village in Wales (pro pronunciation help here), but we also get to visit Italy’s contender on the shores of Lake Maggiore and the pictured postcard from the Dutch village of Gasselternijveenschemond plus a few one-letter wonders through a variety of art and artefacts from the collections of a Europe-wide consortium of museums.
catagories: 🌍, libraries and museums
Friday 9 April 2021
7x7
tsugite: software that generates traditional Japanese joinery (previously) that can be 3D printed or precision cut
prince albert in a can: a collection of fish tin labels from a digital museum dedicated to the Portuguese canning industry
cosmic nature: artist Yayoi Kusama exhibits at New York’s Botanical Garden
tune-dex: the real-fake book of jazz standards, essential to musicians in the 1970s
dingbat: thirty select works of Mid-Century Modern print for inspiration
beer is proof god loves us and wants us to be happy: brew theorems post US National New Beers’ Eve ahead of the anniversary of rescinding parts of the Volstead Act that allowed for consumption of higher proof beer
ukiyo-e: the unintentional ASMR of a master printmaker at work
Monday 5 April 2021
7x7
snuggling cygnets: avian photography of the year, also known as b-poty for short—via Colossal
untitled pizza movie: documenting change in New York City slice-by-slice
aqen the ferryman: Cairo hosts a parade for a score of royal mummies moving to a new museum—via Super Punchsalvator metaversi: art historian turns supposed last Leonardo into an NFT to help out the family who sold it to unscrupulous art dealers
theatre of machines: intricate gear illustrations from Agostino Ramelli (see also here and here)
scenes from a mall: footage from the Southdale Centre’s grand opening in 1956
knock knock: a swan terrorising a neighbourhood in Northampton—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
Tuesday 30 March 2021
cour carrée
Via the always informed Open Culture, we learn that the venerable Louvre is putting its entire collection of nearly half-a-million artworks and artefacts on-line for academics and everyone else to use and peruse through the museum’s new portal. Not only what is hanging on the walls of the gallery, the site also grants access to what is in storage and on loan to other institutions. Of course all the masterpieces are there and with such an overwhelming amount to take in, there are some curated playlists, albums of themes and artists to discover, including depictions of historic moments, portraiture and recent acquisitions.
catagories: 🇫🇷, 🎨, libraries and museums
Sunday 21 March 2021
the gallery of regrettable food
catagories: libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Friday 19 March 2021
7x7
centre of attention: country-focused map world map projections (see previously)
foia follies: celebrating the worst in US government transparency
double-bongcloud: top chess players making bizarrely risky openings—via Kottkethe positively true adventures of the alleged texas cheerleader-murdering mom: fifty year old charged with harassment for producing deepfakes to defame her daughter’s competition and get them kicked off the squad
letterlocked: using x-ray technology and artificial intelligence (see also) to read historical epistolary works without destroying them
house of the muses: a search engine that finds visual correspondence among masterpieces in world-class art museums via Open Culture
terra incognita: a sonic sea chart of phantom islands (previously here and here)—via Things Magazine
catagories: ♞, ⚖️, 🎨, 🗺️, libraries and museums
Thursday 18 March 2021
hodie mihi cras tibi
catagories: ⚰️, 🇬🇧, libraries and museums
Tuesday 9 March 2021
vostok-3ka no. 1
Also known by the designation Sputnik 9 (see previously), the Soviet spacecraft launched on this day in 1961 carried a complement and crew of mice, guinea pig, a dog called Chemushka (“Blackie”) and a realistic human dummy, mannequin called Ivan Ivanovich (the equivalent of Joe Doe or Max Mustermann) that was so distressing uncanny thus prompting technicians to affix a label to his visor lest someone finding Ivan after a mission might not mistake him for an incapacitated cosmonaut or extra-terrestrial. Ivan was auctioned off after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and purchased by Ross Perot, who subsequently donated him to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The mission only consisting of a single trip around the world, it was deorbited shortly
catagories: 🇷🇺, 🔭, libraries and museums, ⓦ
Monday 1 March 2021
pflanzenwissenschaft
Friday 26 February 2021
6x6
affiche: early Art Deco posters of René Magritte
dogs of war: a public service announcement issuing guidance on how to disable Boston Dynamics weaponised Spot units
whitewash: thankfully, President Biden is able to overturn “beautiful” architecture executive order that would mandate neo-classicism in federal buildings
clothes peg: the clothesline animals of Helga Stentzel
second life: exploring and conserving the abandoned spaces of the internet
mask media: brilliant Soviet Kazakh health promotion campaigns from the 1970s—see also
catagories: ⚕️, 🎨, 💡, architecture, libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Tuesday 2 February 2021
6x6
pitch and pent: the rooftop illusion demonstrated by Kolichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Mathematics
making sense of scents: the olfactory capacities are underestimated—via Messy Nessy Chic
have fun storming the castle: The Princess Bride re-enacted in its entirety as home movies under lock-down
matinee at the bijou: the Internet Archive (see previously) has digitally curated a massive cinematic history library
pyrophone: a flame organ that amplifies the tones of vibrating, burning hydrogen
10100:an individual engineers an analogue, modular calculator (see also) to count up to a googol
Monday 1 February 2021
👁️🗨️
Via Waxy, we are referred to an expansive and growing and searchable collection of graphic design related items, materials and resources organised from and available at the Internet Archives (previously) by curator Valery Marier. Categories include font specimens, annuals, style guides, book jackets, infographics, data visualisations, various advertising ephemera and vintage branding devices.
catagories: 📐, 🔣, libraries and museums
Monday 25 January 2021
collezionare capolavori
Though in stasis and awaiting visitors, the storied and seldom seen Torlonia Marbles from a private collection are gathered together for public viewing for the first time, resulting from an agreement four decades in negotiation and agreed upon four years before the exhibition was scheduled to open. Not only was the loan to Rome’s Capitoline Museum controversial and fraught with compromise and conciliation, there’s some intrigue associated with its collectors as well—the family once the bankers and economic advisors to the Vatican and master and model for the attainment of prestige and status through art collecting.
Saturday 23 January 2021
7x7
dog and ferret sundries, etc: a fantastic hardware catalogue from the 1930s
the roaring twenties: the Sea Shanty craze of a century before—via Strange Companymidori: the relatively modern distinction between blue and green in Japan—see previously
tag yourself: medieval owl alignment chart
arkaphones: a resounding retrospective to artist Terry Adkins, who created sonic monuments
for all the latest medical poop, call surgeon general c. everett koop: the fortune and failure of the post executive branch career of the doctor’s branded medical advice website
ghost signs: self-appointed guardian of fading signage, collecting it before it vanishes altogether—we can all do this
catagories: ⚕️, 🇬🇧, 🇯🇵, 🎶, 💬, 📐, 📱, antiques, libraries and museums, Middle Ages, networking and blogging
Friday 15 January 2021
presque vu, jamais vu
In the spirit of those spirit guides that direct the curious to something never before seen (see also here, here and here), a sort of negative view count, London’s Science Museum—with only about a quarter of its vast holdings documented—has a digital docent that scours the archives to bring forth an artefact, from the mundane to the mysterious, that has not really seen the light of day since accessioning and a suite of tools to curate and adopt these special exhibitions. Let us know what wonder you are the first to see.
catagories: 🌤️, 🎓, libraries and museums