Category Archives: Museums

Digital learning and education in museums? Download a copy here (.pdf)

Welcome to this informative booklet on Digital Learning and Education in Museums! This report, created by the Learning Museum Working Group of the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO), offers innovative approaches and insights on how museums can enhance their educational offerings through digital means.

Here are three themes you may wish to explore…

What are some of the key benefits of incorporating digital learning into museum education programs?

According to page 12 of this report, one of the key benefits of opening up access to digital data in museums is that it provides educational institutions with trustworthy materials for education. This not only focuses on a narrow canon but opens up wider perspectives for the students, so that both individuals and communities can form more informed, complex, and inclusive outlooks on the world.

Additionally, page 6 notes that digital learning can take place both intentionally (through formal educational projects) and unintentionally (through playful interaction with museum objects or co-curating digital collections), providing opportunities for both formal and informal learning.

How have museums successfully integrated digital learning into their exhibits and programs?

Page 84 of this report notes that increasing Open Access to museum data and Open Source solutions have allowed cultural heritage institutions to test new formats of digital learning and visitor engagement through co-creation, co-curation, and data reuse.

This has enabled museums to offer a wider range of educational opportunities to visitors, including interactive exhibits, virtual tours, and online resources. However, the report also acknowledges that many museums face challenges when implementing digital learning programs, such as a lack of technical skills or budget constraints. The report provides case studies of successful digital learning initiatives in several museums throughout Europe.

What are some of the challenges museums face when implementing digital learning, and how can they overcome them?

Some of the challenges museums face when implementing digital learning programs include a lack of technical skills in the team, a lack of technical equipment and software, poor awareness of technological advancements, or budget constraints holding back the digital transformation.

To overcome these challenges, museums can invest in training programs for their staff to improve their technical skills and knowledge. They can also seek partnerships with technology companies or other organisations to provide access to necessary equipment and software. Additionally, museums can work to increase awareness among staff and visitors about the benefits of digital learning and the potential impact it can have on education and engagement.

Finally, museums can explore alternative funding sources or seek out grants to help support their digital learning initiatives.

The report was created by the Learning Museum Working Group of the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO).

The report was published in January 2023.

This article was rendered by AI – it was ratified before publication by a human.

 

In the U.S. the Smithsonian Institution has created an Open Access resource of staggering diversity.

Update July 2020: If you are interested in furniture, specifically in growing your own furniture – check out this fabulous article on the BBC web pages – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32977012


Swiss/German side chair, late 17thC – early 18thC – Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

“Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images—right now, without asking. With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo”.

Source: https://www.si.edu/openaccess

As always with Open Access resources, despite millions of electronic artifacts in the Public Domain on the Smithsonian web pages, some do have license/usage restrictions. Always check before use!

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966

For the inquisitive, there is a wealth of subject matter and themes to explore on the Smithsonian pages. Whether your interest is art, ceramics, photography, science or zoology…there will be a reservoir of interesting items to peruse.

A search of the archive for ‘film’ produces a delightful range of posters, lobby cards and images of garments worn in Hollywood movies.

See an example search here.

This is a creative archive in the public domain, bar none. It is easy, even in a short time, to find resources that can inspire your next creative project.

We recommend a visit to the Smithsonian.

 


An exhibition at The British Library – Writing: Making Your Mark

 –  Book your tickets here

PACCAR 1, The British Library,  96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB

“Discover the extraordinary story behind one of humankind’s greatest achievements: through more than 100 objects spanning 5,000 years and seven continents

Follow the remarkable evolution of writing from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs carved in stone and early printed text such as William Caxton’s edition of The Canterbury Tales, to the art of note-taking by some of history’s greatest minds, and on-wards to the digital communication tools we use today.”                                     Source: The British Library web pages

This new exhibition provides wonderful insights into the both the future of writing and the past development of the craft.

From quill pen to digital tablet, how we create and communicate has been beautifully illustrated for us, ‘…in an interactive exhibition gives you the chance to reflect on works of genius that wouldn’t exist without the writing traditions of civilisations past’.

Discover more at The British LIbrary here…arrive clutching your biro and notepad!

The Finnish National Gallery has made twelve thousand works of art available in the Public Domain. Free to use, they are licensed and distributed under the CC0 license.

Not all of the Finnish national holdings have been released, but this substantial artistic trove can be deployed for teaching, as well as research and for commercial use.

An arts journey in the Public Domain courtesy of The Finnish National Gallery

This featured image, entitled  Sarjasta Suites francaises 2 (1999): Léscapade á bicyclette, by Elina Brotherus is an example of the contemporary works that can be found on-line. See more here

You can search the Finnish National Gallery archives by artist/creator, date, theme and technique using the search pages here.

Finnish artists like Helene Schjerfbeck, Albert Edelfelt and  Hugo Simberg represent home land creativity. However, you can also find internationally famous artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch.

The Finnish National Gallery also makes the collection meta-data freely available as an API, so that you can add standardised biographical data to your web installation or application, if using the API. See more details here

We like the international flavour, and the wide variety of images, contained within such a flexible license, immensely. We know that we will be using this resource in our creative projects in the future.

Other freely licensed image collections are available. We have added a flavour of the resources below.

Bravo Finland and its artistic freedom!


Other Public Domain Art resources:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York Public Library – Digital Collections

Public Domain Archive

Getty Museum – Open Collection

Yale University Art Gallery

A Euoropean art resource to be savoured can be found on the web pages of Europeana – see https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/collections/art

Europeana also offers its readers a very sound Public Domain Charter – helping users of Public Domain works to better understand and deploy items in their own works. We recommend it.

See more at… https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/rights/public-domain-charter.html

 


Following on from our recent article on book binding in Barcelona, we seem unable to escape our thematic journey on-line towards the bound artefact.

As booksellers and literacy project specialists we are especially interested in the concept of the book as a seasonal highlight, as to be expected at this time of year. The conversationsEast team were very pleased to see book-binding as part of the programme of the recent Chelmsford Ideas Festival for instance.

This month we were pleased to discover the web pages of the refreshed and rebuilt Yale Center for British Art. Remarkable in that such a concentration of artefacts, academic depth and insight into our native art history should exist in Chapel Street, New Haven, Connecticut.

The opening lecture for the Centre, post-renovation, was Artistic Bookbinding in the Twenty-First Century, delivered by the American book historian and conservator James Reid-Cunningham. See more below…

The lecture, The Poet of Them All, concentrates on a remarkable collection of Shakespeare editions in miniature from the holdings of the Yale Centre and in concert with collectors Neale and Margaret Albert.

The richness, skill and indeed, even fun, of such collections is beautifully captured in the Reid-Cunningham lecture. The expressive art and craft skill of the binder in the twenty first century is also visually well expressed in the discourse. In an age of electronics it is sometimes easy to forget the power, even magic, generated by the carefully crafted, masterfully bound book. Whatever its size.

There is much to enjoy across the whole of the Yale Center for British Art. Research at the Yale Center benefits from concurrent funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, encouraging a wide programme of lectures, study and talks to disseminate the findings of the Center. As you would expect from such a world centre of excellence.

We particularly liked the Center’s new education programme Visual Literacy: Rethinking the Role of the Arts in Education. Using the great visual resources the Center holds to create interest in and higher utility in reading. Art becomes the book, becomes the writer!

See the trailer for the work below…

Visual Literacy: Rethinking the Role of Arts in Education from cyra levenson on Vimeo.

Giving  books is a great idea over the festive holidays, getting the family into an art gallery or museum is even better. We visited Seven Stories in Newcastle earlier in 2016, so we know you can achieve the same ‘Yale’ effect without a visit to Connecticut.

Unless you travel on-line that is? Happy Christmas to our readers.

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(Image: Alberto Giacometti, with his work)

A visit to Sainsbury Centre on Friday 20th February, 2015

We had a group of seventeen fellows and friends who met up for the visit. We congregated at 10.30 for complimentary tea and coffee at the Modern Life café and then we were taken off by three guides to explore the Centre. We began with the Permanent exhibition on the ground floor and then after a short break proceeded to the basement exhibition areas to view the Reality exhibition, which was outstanding.

Curated by artist Chris Stevens, REALITY brings together over 50 works celebrating the strength of British painting with some of the best and most influential artists of the last sixty years.

The Sainsbury Centre is one of the most prominent university art galleries in Britain, and a major national Centre for the study and presentation of art.

It houses the extraordinary art collection of Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, as well as the Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau and the University’s Abstract and Constructivist Collection. Alongside these permanent collections, there is a range of temporary exhibitions, with new galleries providing the largest climate-controlled exhibition space in Eastern England. Also on offer is an award-winning learning programme of gallery talks, lectures and art workshops. (See the programme of lectures, symposia and training here).

The Collections at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts represent some of the most remarkable works of art assembled in the UK. The Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection features work spanning 5,000 years of human creativity. The presentation of art from across time and place continues to inspire and surprise and uniquely presents art as a universal global phenomenon.

femmeaucafePic
Picasso, 1901-2 Femme au Cafe

The Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection
Permanently displayed in the Living Area Gallery, the collection includes major holdings of art from Oceania, Africa, the Americas, Asia, the ancient Mediterranean cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome, Medieval Europe, and including a significant number of works acknowledged as seminal examples of European modern art. Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Francis Bacon, Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Amedeo Modigliani are all represented in the collection.

The Lisa Sainsbury Ceramics Collection
Although not formally part of the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection, the Lisa Sainsbury Ceramics Collection represents a major collection of 20th century studio ceramics, including a significant body of work by Lucie Rie and Hans Coper.

The Sainsbury Abstract Collection
The Sainsbury Abstract Collection includes paintings from the post second world war Ecole de Paris with a strong preference for lyrical abstraction and Tachisme, art movements that flourished in France from 1945 to 1960. Notable artists included in the collection are Jean Fautrier, Charles Maussion and Mubin Orhon.

The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau
Alongside the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection sits another principle collection; The Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau, donated in 1978 by Sir Colin Anderson, a close friend of Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury. The collection represents artists working across a range of disciplines and materials such as glassware and furniture, metalware and jewelry. The collection includes pieces by leading exponents of Art Nouveau such as Louis Comfort Tiffany, Emile Gallé and René Lalique.

Vorticist David Bomberg's The Mud Bath, 1914
Vorticist David Bomberg’s The Mud Bath, 1914

The University Collection of Abstract and Constructivist Art, Design and Architecture was established by the University in 1968. This Collection concentrates on the non-objective, constructive and concrete art movements of the 20th century and the related fields of architecture and design, such as the English Vorticists, the Russian Suprematists and Constructivists, the Dutch De Stijl Group and the German Bauhaus School.

All who attended enjoyed getting to know each other and spoke of possibly another visit soon. It was very much enjoyed by all and many used their ticket to linger longer in the afternoon. Also, a new Francis Bacon exhibition is coming soon. The Francis Bacon paintings are currently at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and will return for the Francis Bacon and the Masters exhibition in April.

Possibly another day out!

Christine O’Hanlon FRSA

(Public domain images are for illustrative purposes only – they do not seek to represent the collections in the narrative about this visit).

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The weekend of June 28th 2014 marked the centenary of the death of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip. Arguably sparking the events that put in train the First World War.

This reflection revealed a surprising and diverse range of resources about the Great Conflict. Many, perhaps, at odds with the perceived understanding of the war and its consequences. Remarkable in as much that so much is yet to be discovered, even after a century has passed…

Image: A single German war grave near Ypres, commemorating over 40,000 of their lost combatants…

The weekend in East Anglia in 2014 was fresh, warm and sunny, as it was across England on that weekend in 1914. (You can see a detailed weather forecast from The Meteorological Office for June 1914 here  pdfIcon4…Ed.) It is unlikely that Princip, in his passion to undermine Austrian dominance of his culture, was thinking of the words of Thomas Hoccleve, see below.

His ambitions were arguably localised, national, but the outcome of his act  was trans-continental. With the destruction to come, the terrible devastation of war, linked to and having an unfortunate long echo back to the previous tumultuous tragedies in France during the 15th Century. The anguish is contemporary still.

Allas! what peple hathe your werre slayne!
What cornes wastede, and doune trode and shent!
How many a wyfe and maide hathe be forlayne,
Castrels doune bete, and tymbered houses brent
And drawen doune, and alle tortore and rent!
The harme ne may not rekened be ne tolde;
This werre wexethe all to hore and olde…

Thomas Hoccleve, Poet & Clerk, London
‘An appeal for Peace in France’ (1412)

Princip, part of a team of six Bosnian-Serb radicals dedicated to their plan,  was standing outside a cafe in Franz Josef Street, reflecting on an earlier failed assassination attempt upon the Austrian Archduke by a co-conspirator that day. When, seeing the royal vehicle, engine stalled  after taking a wrong turn, he leapt forward with his revolver, and from a distance of five feet, changed history.

This story of ‘cataclysm by happenstance’ continues to provoke debate and divide about how the next few months saw progress into war, but also about the wider legacy of Princip’s actions, even after a hundred years has passed. The narratives still differ, both historic and contemporary, often in surprising ways.

Modern Sarajevo remains a divided city, politically and culturally, to this day. With Princip seen as hero or devil depending upon the view of historical events taken from the city centre. To mark the Sarajevan centenary Andrew MacDowall, in The Guardian newspaper, has written an interesting and insightful article on how stands the political front-line concerning Princip.

You can discover MacDowell’s article on-line here…

In Eastern Sarajevo, from the view point of the Serb Republic, Princip is a national hero,. His actions freeing the city from Austrian dominance. However, for the Bosnian Muslim population Princip’s actions bought about an end to a golden era of Austrian administration. The Muslim population look to the grand edifices of civil society, schools and railways of the Austrian Empire as evidence of their argument.

Even after a hundred years, residents of a strife torn city cannot agree on a single, conciliatory view of their history. This set us thinking about that sunny day in 1914. What were, or what did, contemporaries to Princip think about the coming events and their out turn?

We turned to the Project Gutenberg on-line library. Looking through the project’s World War 1 bookshelf we discovered, amongst the usual, deeply moving and contemporary military narratives, a surprising and very different view of events and understanding of the ‘culture’ of war, particularly of conflict in other places.

This writer did not know of a Mills and Boon, Kiplingesque  literary  oeuvre developed around events of the war. Deeply at odds with the first person narrative of other, military writers, but perhaps born of a then contemporary optimism for Empire, incomplete knowledge and the heady ‘home by Christmas’ approach.

The Gutenberg archive also makes available to the general reader a selection of European political writing on the Great War. We found the account of pre-war diplomacy and events from Viscount Haldane both disturbing and revealing about political attitudes and actions towards European conflict. See more here…

interneticon  You can discover the Gutenberg Project library World War bookshelf here…

Red Cross Girls cover picMargaret Vandercook in her The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army, (John Winston Co., Philadelphia, 1916)  writes about war and combat as a sort of Mills & Boon romance adventure. Dashing young men in foreign places, capturing the swooning hearts of kindly young women. Published in 1916, it arguably represents a canon of juvenile fiction, that was blind to, or unknowing of the true horror of warfare at any front-line.

There is a sort of breathless, adventure story pace to the book, at odds with the newsreel and written narratives we have come to know about the Great War and other conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries.

There is in this bookshelf collection a fascinating insight into the power of Empire and the loyalty created in military service.

In Talbot Munday’s Hira Singh – When India Came to Fight in Flanders  lies the fictionalised story of a group of Sikh soldiers captured by the German army in Flanders and transported back to ‘Constantinople’, who then escaped and marched overland to Kabul in Afghanistan to rejoin the British Army in their fight in Europe again.

One hundred Indian troops of the British Army have arrived at Kabul, Afghanistan, after a four months’ march from Constantinople. The men were captured in Flanders by the Germans and were sent to Turkey in the hope that…they might join the Turks. But they remained loyal to Great Britain and finally escaped, heading for Afghanistan. They now intend to join their regimental depot in India, so it is reported.
New York Times, July, 1915 (Talbot Munday)

Although fiction, with some of the language jarring by modern cultural norms, and being written by a European,  the story none the less provides insights into the nature of leadership, how men who were accomplished warriors from another culture, might have seen the conflict in Europe with empathetic eyes.

The archive does not contain any reflection from Indian sources, but when looking at the contribution of the Indian Army and Marine service to the conflict, there is little doubt that support there was.

How profound, prompted a look at the detail of the contribution of the Indian Army in the Great War? Details of the 1 million Indian troops who served in France, Mesopotamia and other battle zones can be found on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission web pages. interneticon  See more here…

Closer to home are a range of projects and community activities to remember the Great War in detail.  One such is the work done by Fellows in Chelmsford, as part of a Heritage Lottery funded  project – Chelmsford Remembers,  and which will be launched as part of the Essex Remembers event, which involves both Essex County Council and Chelmsford City Council, to held at Hylands House on the weekend of 13th/14th September.

We look forward to supporting Fellows in the project by delivering a ‘web special feature’ about this exciting social history journey of discovery. (You can find the Chelmsford War Memorial web site here – this is a wonderful resource, with images and detailed biographies of the 359 men commemorated on the Great War Memorial in Chelmsford, Ed.)

Even after one hundred years, the local and social is as telling and moving as ever. Princip would probably still recognise the physical landscape old Sarajevo, if not the political one, whilst great new discoveries and insights lay waiting in the family archives of Chelmsford we suspect.


Newer on-line resources for The Great War

interneticon The Google Cultural Institute – The First World War

A new web resource, dedicated to the art, politics and history of the great conflict. Referencing major UK museum collections, but also providing insights into history from a surprising variety of sources.

 interneticon  Europeana Exhibitions – Untold Stories of the First World War

A  new resource offering insights into how ‘… it was the ordinary men and women who were affected the most. This exhibition gives those personal accounts from across Europe for the first time, based on stories and items contributed by the public’.

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Here at conversationsEAST, this was a story that had everything. High art, craft skills, invention, controversy and ladles of genius. Entwining a Texas entrepreneur, a seventeenth century Dutch painter and an obsessive journey into the ‘how it was done’.

Tim Jenison is a Texas based inventor and technologist with a deep interest in the painting of Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675). Put simply, Jenison is of the view that Vermeer could not have painted his interior scenes from life alone, the application of technology, Jenison insists, is how the stunning art works were created so long ago.

The short film below encapsulates the long journey of exploration that Jenison has undertaken to make his point. He has deployed art history skills, the talents of a craftsmen and the inquisitiveness of an inventor to make an argument, which whilst contentious is, none the less, powerful.

His five year journey involved making exact replicas of the furniture and musical instruments in a Vermeer painting, and through utilising the concept of a camera obscura and a mirror on a stick, Tim sought to recreate Vermeer’s picture, The Music Lesson.

The interiors of the room, it’s content and effects were built by Tim, even hand building the lens to seventeenth century specifications that he used to deliver his painting technique.

The results? Well you can see the full depiction of his work over time in this original article from an issue of boingboing.net.

Is it a good argument? We have looked at another old master to see if his thesis is watertight. We have used images stored on the pages of the Google Cultural Institute. (If you have a love of the visual arts this is a storehouse and toolkit of very impressive proportions – Ed.)

Canaletto image
Section of Il Canal Grande de Ca’Balbi verso Rialto 1721-1723
Antonio Canal detto Canalletto | Ca’ Rezzonico – Museum of the 18th Century Venice

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Within the broad sweep of this large Canaletto, the texture of the oil paint, the slightly impressionistic depiction of the figures and the matte ‘depth’ of the boat clearly show Canaletto’s brush work and his hand.

Below is a similar size section of the painting, The Music Lesson by Vermeer, that was the object of Tim Jenison’s attention. In it the light falling from the window, the tone and smoothness of the wall surface by the window and increasing colour change away from the light source into the room are, to echo Jenison’s argument, extremely photo-like.

Vermeer image
Section of Lady at the Virginal with a Gentleman, The Music Lesson c. 1162 – 1665
Johannes Vermeer | Royal Collection Trust, UK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This might disturb quite a lot of people

…David Hockney

The work of Jenison and his collaborators is a wonderful example to anyone who has an idea or a need to find out, whether an RSA Fellow or not. Obsessive perhaps, but stunning in the execution of so many skills and techniques.

Was Vermeer really a tech geek?

Read the article, watch the film and tell us what you think….

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The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts has been selected as a finalist in interneticon the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2014 competition.

Designed by interneticon Foster + Partners, this iconic building rests in the University of East Anglia campus landscape and is perhaps the pre-eminent collection of modern art in our region. The permanent collection housed at the Centre was relaunched with a complete re-display in September of 2013.

At the same time the Centre’s largest exhibition to date was opened – interneticonMasterpieces: Art and East Anglia. The exhibition was assembled from some 250 works, donated by over 60 institutions. The  ranged from neolithic flint hand axes, tomb effigies from East Anglian churches to paintings from the Norwich School artist John Cotman.

The space, with its endless variety of ways to approach the works, still attracts a sense of wonder and deep engagement. The short video below, featuring the Centre Director and art historian Philip Mould, conveys this sense of connection well.

If you have never visited the interneticon Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, you should. Not least to see how the curatorial energy of the Centre team has won them a deserved place in this competition.

interneticon  See the Art Fund pages and details of the other finalists here. cropped-conversationsEASTbanner2.jpg

Image credit:

News Desk image by Markus Winkler, Creative Commons, Unsplash...

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