The Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan offers various online audio guides – of particular note is that for the exhibition Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Visionary Architect. Drawings from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. (The show debuted at the Menil Collection in Houston last year, and you an read our review here.) A highly original and innovative French draftsman of the late eighteenth century, Lequeu was under-recognized in his time. Fortunately, the Morgan’s combination of visual, audio, and text will help you appreciate his work; some of which is quite surreal. One such example is Cow Barn and Gate to the Hunting Grounds, a particularly enjoyable example of “speaking architecture.”
In addition to the audio options, consider enjoying the digitized Catalogue des tableaux de Mr. de Jullienne, a c. 1756 illustrated listing of a French collector’s art holdings. Click ‘zoom image’ on any that strike your interest, and you’ll be able to view them magnified–without losing any clarity!
The Frick Collection
The Frick has a remarkable video collection. A few of our favorites:
- Davide Gasparotto, a senior curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, speaking about Bertoldo di Giovanni and the “Revival of the Antique.” James Gardner wrote about Bertoldo for us in the Nov/Dec 2019 issue of ANTIQUES, should you like to read more.
- “Entering the Art Market: Collectors and Their Passions” which includes collectors Bernard Lumpkin and Ann Tenenbaum, speaking about their interests, their collecting process, early purchases, and tips for new (and seasoned) collectors.
- Jane Bridgeman, a former lecturer at the University of the Arts, London, offers insight into portrayals of dress in sixteenth-century paintings and how they signified status in “From Cardinals to Courtesans: Dress as Image in Italian Renaissance Painting.”
The American Folk Art Museum
Between the Online Collection, Video Collection, and Magazine Collection you have quite a bit of folk art to explore!
A few highlights from each that we enjoyed at TMA:
- This appliqué crib quilt is delightfully asymmetrical and the joy with which is was made is obvious. The Textiles section of the Online Collection is full of similarly beautiful quilts, but also includes rugs, banners, and other creations in fabric.
- Many of you likely loved and miss Folk Art magazine (a.k.a, Clarion), so you’ll be glad to see 118 issues have been digitized for you to view! The Summer 2005 issue is a favorite of ours for Lee Kogan’s Self & Subject article (beginning page 31) and Stacy C. Hollander and Brooke Davis Anderson’s spotlight on African-American art from the collection (beginning page 39). FYI: The issuu platform on which these digital copies are available has an app on both Google Play and the Apple Store which makes them much easier to read on a tablet.
The British Museum: Museum of the World
A spectacular interactive timeline is available at the British Museum’s Museum of the World created with the support of Google’s Cultural Institute.
Items are connected to one another via their relationships, which will help you explore how certain creations influenced others over time. They are organized by region (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania) as well as topic (Art and Design, Living and Dying, Power and Identity, Religion and Belief, and Trade and Conflict); this makes it easy to browse.
Each item features a text explanation, an audio note, a Google map location, and a collection of related items to explore. Click on the images to expand them and zoom in. This is experienced best, as you may expect, on Google Chrome.
National Women’s History Museum
As we continue to celebrate Women’s History Month, enjoy some of the many online exhibits hosted by the National Women’s History Museum. These exhibits are experienced as digital magazines; you flip through each page which features an image from the collection and text information aside it. We enjoyed this particularly interactive feature on Harriet Tubman and this spotlight on the Women of NASA.
Also consider checking out this oral histories exhibit-of-sorts – Rosie the Riveter Oral Histories – featuring the stories of Arlene Snyder, Anna Hess, Connie Palaczio, Modesta Echols, and Nora Jones who speak about the movement in their own words.
A Short History of the Highrise, supported by the National Film Board of Canada and the New York Times
Filmmaker Katerina Cizek and the archivist Jeff Roth have created this interactive storybook, focusing on the developments of vertical living and the issues that arise from urbanization. The short films act as ‘chapters’ and are beautifully composed.
As the National Film Board notes in their description of the project, “on tablets, viewers can navigate the story extras and special features within the films using touch commands like swipe, pinch, pull and tap. On desktop and laptop computers, users can mouse over features and click to navigate. Smartphone users can view the four films.” We recommend you enjoy this on either of the former to have the full experience.
Nasher Sculpture Center
If you need music to play in your home office, or if you’d like to enjoy some while you relax, consider the Nasher Sculpture Center’s YouTube playlist of classical recordings. They include discussions with many of the musicians interspersed with performance, and some incredible and unique compositions. The complete playlist is available here.
