The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50,000 High-Res Images from Their Collection Online
21The Art Institute of Chicago recently unveiled a new website design. As part of their first design upgrade in 6 years, they have placed more than 52,000 high-resolution images from their collection online, available to all comers without restriction.
https://www.artic.edu/collection?is_public_domain=1
Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we’ve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these images can be downloaded for free on the artwork pages.
We’ve also enhanced the image viewing capabilities on object pages, which means that you can see much greater detail on objects than before. Check out the paint strokes in Van Gogh’s The Bedroom, the charcoal details on Charles White’s Harvest Talk, or the synaesthetic richness of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Blue and Green Music…
https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-website-redesign
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I was all like HOT DAMN THEY BETTER HAVE WARHOL’S DIAMOND DUST JOSEPH BEUYS and then I was all excited because they do, but then when I clicked on the image I got a server error. Whatever. Dumb museum.
@mossygreen That one probably isn’t public domain, anyway. It’s new enough to have a valid copyright.
I brought up Hopper’s Nighthawks, and the download link is missing.
@craigthom Hmm, maybe they’re just ironing out the kinks, then.
I once stood behind two girls in front of Nighthawks, one of whom was explaining to the other that she’d seen it before, but featuring Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and James Dean, which I thought was ridiculous and very funny. I later told this to a girl in an art class who, it turned out, also didn’t know that the original did not feature '50’s icons, and then I felt really bad because I’d been kind of mean about it. But I think she forgave me? Anyway, I try to not judge people, because we all come to things in our own time and own ways. But I was less scrupulous about it in my younger years.
@mossygreen I thought it had Sylvester Stallone and Rutger Hauer. /shrug
@craigthom @mossygreen You mean the original isn’t the one with Snapster in it?
@mossygreen I’m in no position to judge people on their art knowledge. I went to an engineering school and didn’t know squat until I moved to Rockford, Illinois. I visited the Art Institute, fell in love with it, and started making five or six trips a year. And most of my time was spent on the second floor, starting at the back staircase by the Chagall window, past American Gothic, Nighthawks, etc, then across into all the Impressionism stuff.
I have now visited some other museums and read some books on art history, but I’d say 80% of my art knowledge still comes from reading the cards by paintings.
@mossygreen worked for me in Chrome
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/125658/diamond-dust-joseph-beuys
Even at 6 megapixels I can’t see the strokes on the Seurat, but it’s so big.
Seems like not so long ago that museums couldn’t decide if public hi res images were the best thing to happen for public access or the worst institution destroying technology. The times they are a’changing.
@brittanyjohnson No matter how high the resolution there’s no substitute for standing in front of a painting or sculpture, but I guess people wouldn’t know that if they haven’t been to a museum.
@craigthom oh yeah, no question, but it sparked this interesting debate about who owns copyright if you take a photo (or multiple stitched together) of a public domain item owned by an institution.
@brittanyjohnson You can really tell how old, cracked, and crappy some of them are when you zoom in. They really should look into doing art via computer graphics instead of paint and canvass. Maybe that’s the next step. Take these crappy paintings and digitally enhance them for the modern age.
@medz There are several fine artists (not to mean artists who are good, but those creating “fine art”) working in digital media. As far back as 1989 pressure sensing drawing tablets were being released by CalComp and Wacom (followed shortly by Kurta and later GTCO). I have an original piece created by a Bay area artist which she very generously gifted to me at the end of a project we worked on together. I’ll dig it up and share it here. You wouldn’t believe the quality of her work, particularly considering the painting was done in 1990 on a 32MB Mac IIfx using a Knoll brothers alpha version of what eventually become Photoshop.
@medz Or hey, they could restore them.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/amateur-artist-restores-15th-century-religious-shrine-1345679
Some of my best field trips were to the Art Institute. I still don’t know much about art, but I’ve always loved wandering around that place. Discovering those stained glass windows was a magical experience.
I guess this is cool for those who can’t get there in person.