The Metropolitan Museum of Art has made nearly 650 titles published from 1964 to the present available online, which “offers unparalleled in-depth access to the Museum’s renowned print and online publications, covering art, art history, archaeology, conservation, and collecting.” This will be is a huge boost for researchers, who can browse sections dedicated to the…
Publishing art history books has always been fraught with problems: image rights, high quality printing costs, and diminishing opportunities for print publication contracts, to name a few. Yale University Press is, with the help of a Mellon Foundation grant, exploring options to make digital publication a greater possibility for topics in art history. One great…
There’s an interesting multi-part discussion going on in the New York Times about whether art (visual, performance, theater, film, writing, music) can still shock us. Articles revisit some historic events such as the premiere of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” and the public funding battles in the 1990s over controversial art (such as Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs…
Good news: ARTstor announced a new Online Art Agreement (OLA) has been signed with Artists Rights Society (ARS) on behalf of six international affiliates. This will translate into the addition of more than 10,000 modern and contemporary artists from Australia, Canada, Austria, Finland, Mexico and Brazil. No word yet on when this will happen, so…
What began as a lament for what was has become a celebration of what is: the amateur restoration of Elias Garcia Martinez’ “Ecce Homo” by a elderly woman now has fans all over the world. Just check out the Beast-Jesus Restoration Society Facebook page (with a petition link to save the restoration from being restored).
An elderly parishioner from the Sanctuary of Mercy Church, Borja, Spain, took it upon herself to “restore” one of the church’s beloved 19th-century frescoes -– Ecce Homo by Elias Garcia Martinez. The unhappy results can be seen in the before-and-after images, and in the aftermath of the incident the work now has a new nickname:…