A new website devoted to art-based video content, Artbabble.org, was launched yesterday by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Artbabble brings together unique videos ranging from 30-second clips to over one-hour documentaries and presentations, allows institutions to share their video resources. The IMA has partnered in this project with Art21, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, which all share space on the site’s easy to navigate interface.
Users can search the site in a number of ways—by artist, by series (such as Webisodes from the Louvre or Behind the Scenes at MoMA), or by subject in “channels”—and are able to comment and rate videos. One excellent feature of the new site is the “notes” section that appears on the right-hand of the screen when a video is played—it features additional content both on and off Artbabble, including links to related works of art, news articles, books on related topics, and encyclopedia entries. For example, a short video interviewing Jim Canary, a conservator at the Lily Library at Indiana University who worked on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road scroll, includes links to the Beat Museum website, a footage of Canary unrolling the 120-foot long scroll at the IMA, and a video and newspaper article about the scroll’s owner Jim Irsay.
While ArtBabble is still in its infancy, it is easy to see the website’s potential. Additional institutional partnerships and new content will continue to evolve and expand the site. IMA will add new content about upcoming programs and exhibitions, hoping to stream live events in the future, and plans to include one major documentary per year on a contemporary artist, and to create some content in response to user interest.
Here The Magazine ANTIQUES selects a few highlights we think our readers will enjoy:
IMA Director’s Journal: Exhibition preview of European Design Since 1985
Curators select 11 Masterpieces from LACMA
Interview with the conservator of On the Road scroll, Jim Canary
