494 posts tagged with museum.
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Irish museum solves mystery of bronze age axe heads
Doc Brown without the DeLorean
Even Lee’s washing machine collection began with his wife. As he often tells the story, the couple bought an RV when Lee retired in 1985, and they planned a road trip from Colorado to Maine. Somewhere in Iowa, they stopped at a farmer’s estate sale. There, among the implements and tools, Lee spied a 1907 Maytag Model 44. He loved the machine’s beauty and the mechanics of it. Over time, he began to love the idea that these machines changed women’s roles at home. Barbara didn’t object when Lee paid $100 for the contraption and loaded it into their ride. She didn’t complain much, either, when he kept stopping and buying up antique washers. “We bought 12 more all the way to Maine,” Lee says. “We came home with a mobile home and a new trailer filled with washing machines.” from The Charming, Eccentric, Blessed Life of Lee Maxwell [5280]
A Fitting Send Off for a Beautiful, Historic Plane
After years of trying to find a contract or buyer, Coulson Aviation has donated one of their last-of-a-kind Martin JRM Mars WW2 seaplane-turned-waterbombers to the BC Aviation museum. This weekend, the plane made it's last flight from Port Alberni to Victoria, escorted by the Royal Canadian Air Force Snowbirds team. I don't have any personal connection to this event, but I love aircraft and seeing this big bird fly in formation brought me to tears in my office this morning.
(Coulson's other Mars aircraft, Phillipine Mars, will make its last flight to the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson later this year.)
Exit Through the Grift Shop
On November 14th of 2022, I received an FTX sponsored bobblehead of Jordan Poole. This was only a few days after the FTX collapse. I realized I had a collectors item and found other similar sports related collectors items at home such as a Webvan hockey puck. Combining my passion for entrepreneurship, risk taking, and collectibles, I built a collection of artifacts from failed companies, products, toys, and sports. [more inside]
Banksy without Banksy
The Banksy Museum does not own or display any actual Banksys but rather 167 decent-enough reproductions of them, life-size murals and paintings on panels treated to look like exterior walls that stretch through an exhibition space, designed to resemble the street. Max Lakin for the New York Times [more inside]
Skeleton of famous whale-hunting Orca "Old Tom" reassembled
Skeleton of famous whale-hunting Orca "Old Tom" reassembled for new museum display. The orca known for working alongside human whalers has been given a new exhibit that museum curators hope pays better homage to its legacy.
Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, Found
Once Upon a Time, the World of Picture Books Came to Life
Dead Guy lives!
“It’s not quite the same fun festival if I don’t protect Grandpa.” The Frozen Dead Guy and his quirky eponymous festival have been moved to Estes Park, Colorado after troubles keeping the freezer on 40 miles south in Nederland, establishing the world’s first cryonics museum. [more inside]
Recycling haul
Linkfest on recycling or recyclability research and approaches: Pulpatronics makes RFID tags out of scorch marks on paper. Turbine blade maker Vestas may have figured out how to recycle the epoxy in epoxy-carbon-fiber. California museum Exploratorium uses and re-uses machinery from the Bay Area's history, which become part of the exhibits. A polymer analagous to porphyrin is good at collecting gold and platinum from acid-cleaned circuit boards. A plastics-back-to-polymers technique with a new factory opening ?soon?.
You may touch the artifacts
Internet Artifacts: a thoroughly interactive multimedia timeline of the documents, technologies, and phenomena that defined the Internet in the pre-smartphone era. Come for the First Smiley (1983) and the First MP3 (1987), stay for the AOL Dial-Up handshake (1991) and the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (2006). [Via Neal.fun]
The Museum of Youth Culture (UK)
The Museum of Youth Culture - 100 years of growing up in Britain. Features include
growing up behind a Chinese takeaway counter, rural teen life,
rave flyers, Beatlemania, pirate radio, classroom culture, festivals, Coventry, Glasgow, the Ace Cafe on the North Circular, the Gay Liberation Front, a love letter to MySpace, May Day, and Carnival.
Bonus : 100 years of teenage kicks.
Embarking on our Mission of Glorious Obscurity
The Museum of Everyday Life is an ongoing revolutionary museum experiment based in Glover, Vermont. Its mission is a heroic, slow-motion cataloguing of the quotidian–a detailed, theatrical expression of gratitude and love for the minuscule and unglamorous experience of daily life in all its forms. [more inside]
Don't you wonder sometimes 'bout sound and vision?
Snellings Museum of Sound & Vision: a UK-based collection of "an idiosyncratic mix of all things audio video from the very early days of radio leading right up to the present day".
The Variety of Designs is Unbelievable
Welcome the world largest Online Toaster Exhibition...
The revelation that somebody collects toasters often leads to the same reaction: awkward pause, nervous laugh, then: "...Toasters?" The problem is not, to collect toasters. The problem is, to have hundreds of them. The result: They simply call you crazy. Well, and sometimes I think they are right! [Toast, previously]
Traditional watercraft where there are no trees.
Harvey Golden, when he isn't running The Lincoln Street Kayak & Canoe Museum, builds functional representative* replicas of historical indigenous kayaks (87 so far) and paddles. With well curated information to the originals being replicated. [more inside]
Durham NC, USA: Did not expect to find a tuba museum.
V & E Simonetti Historic Tuba Collection Pictures from the 2016 grand opening. "We are actively acquiring instruments for the collection...contact Vince directly." [more inside]
Make sure to say hi to Blathers
All the art in Animal Crossing...in person One man's mission. Fingers crossed he doesn't find any forgeries.
ASMR at the Museum
Watch - and listen - as museum conservation staff work on or demonstrate objects at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. For example: Conserving a Eurovision dress; Humidifying a ballet tutu; Conserving a PJ Harvey costume; Handling a puppet book; Turning the pages of a medieval choirbook; The handling and care of precious books; Massaging hands with bath rasps from Iran; Preparing a Bollywood poster for stretching; Unlocking a 17th-century strongbox. The full playlist. (MLYT).
The Academy is building a bunker that could survive the death of ABC
Walt Hickey and Michael Domanico write Numlock Awards, a Substack newsletter about "the math behind the Oscars and the best narratives going into film’s biggest night". Recently, Hickey wrote about how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is building toward a billion-dollar endowment for its museum and other operations, saying the Academy has changed itself "into something more akin to a university from a balance sheet perspective."
Get closer to Johannes Vermeer with Stephen Fry
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in collaboration with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, has organized a blockbuster exhibition this spring featuring the paintings of Johannes Vermeer—the largest ever—bringing together 25 of the 34 works that can be firmly attributed to the Dutch Golden Age master, whose paintings are rarely loaned out from the lucky handful of collections that possess them. Three additional works with disputed attribution will also be included, following a recent and somewhat controversial authentication by Rijksmuseum curators [previously]. Despite record-breaking ticket sales and extended museum hours, countless Vermeer enthusiasts won’t be able to attend. Fortunately for them the museum has also commissioned a virtual exhibition featuring ultra high resolution photos of Vermeer’s paintings. Click on a thumbnail to peruse specific works on your own, or take an in-depth guided tour with your choice of docent: Stephen Fry (in English) or Joy Delima (in Dutch).
Europe Stinks
Odeuropa, a project to collect and map Europe's "olfactory heritage," has been building knowledge about Europe's historic fragrances and stenches. Check out the Smell Explorer, follow a BBC reporter in a tour of the "smells and stinks of Amsterdam," or sniff the smells of Hell through art.
"The Color of Dreams"
From Serena Jones on Mastodon (@SerenaJ@historians.social): "The Albert Khan Museum in France has just made available for download thousands of early autochrome photos from around the world: Khan, a banker, had top French photographers travel the world documenting everyday aspects of global life which he believed would soon vanish as the world rapidly developed. Such prescience." [more inside]
What is this? A museum for potatoes?
Canadian Potato Museum "may be the least exciting-sounding museum in the world." Get your picture taken with the world’s largest potato sculpture! [more inside]
It was obvious something spurred in the community. It spoke to a need
Always a collector, Cheech Marin brings his art to Riverside
The museum is a first, not just for Marin but for the nation. It’s considered the only permanent art space to exclusively showcase Chicano and Mexican American art in the country. [more inside]
The Underpinnings Museum
"The history of lingerie is an important part of the history of women’s changing role in society, yet it is rarely given the attention it deserves. The Underpinnings Museum is an online museum: a radical innovation in showcasing and documenting exquisite objects, dedicated to the evolution of underwear through the ages." [more inside]
James Madison's Montpelier is purging descendant narratives
James Madison's Montpelier plantation, a historic US Presidential site, has been widely praised for its progress interpreting the history of slavery and the nation's founding. In 2021, after years of intensive effort, its board took the groundbreaking step of giving "structural parity" to descendants of the 300 people enslaved at Montpelier by James Madison, with an equal number of seats on its board of directors as non-descendants (previously). But in the past four weeks, Montpelier's CEO and board chair have begun an effort to dismantle and reverse the new structures to limit descendant power on the board. And today, they fired and suspended key longtime staff members in retaliation for blowing the whistle and expressing public support for the descendants. [more inside]
the plans came “dangerously close to a Holocaust Disneyland”
On how to commemorate Babyn Yar (Babi Yar), the mass grave outside of Kyiv. Note: This story was conceived and written before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Apart from the addition of updates to reflect recent developments, we chose not to substantially alter the piece.
Then where do all the calculators go?
How would a divine epiphany appear to an artificial intelligence? Artist Diemut Strebe's installation The Prayer is an animatronic silicone mouth driven by a GPT2 instance trained on religious texts that attempts to produce original sermons and chants. [more inside]
Rendering heretofore invisible culinarians visible
14 feet tall, nearly 30 feet wide, and composed of 406 handmade blocks, The Museum of Food and Drink's Legacy Quilt honors the countless African American food and drink producers who have laid the foundation for American cuisine. The quilt can be browsed and searched online in its entirety. [more inside]
New work by Basquiat! Or is it?
Newly discovered paintings by Basquiat are going on display. But things may not be what they’re said to be. (archive.org link)
The Jurassic Park / Home Alone crossover looks excellent
Knitwear Fit for a T. Rex : "There is nothing more funny than a jumper fitted for a dinosaur that has the tiniest arms in the world." (SLNYT)
it has, ironically, become necessary for me to fight my own government
The Adler Planetarium's Here, Queer, and Exploring Beyond the Atmosphere is a short online exhibit about the life and legacy of Dr. Frank Kameny.
Who Will Record the Acoustiguides?
The Art Institute of Chicago has let go of its roughly 150 highly-trained volunteer docents, and says it will eventually replace them with a "limited number of paid educators." The Chicago Tribune disapproves, and the chair of the museum's Board of Trustees responds.
Okay cheers then thanks then cheers okay cheers thanks cheers...
Don't trust Bigipedia (previously)? Want something more trustworthy and less physically possible? Look no further than The Museum of Everything, the eighteen-episode comedy audio sketch series with a dash of magical realism - so don't sweat the impossibility of a provincial museum just off the M3 that's curated by Tom Waits and contains literally everything (except maybe Badgerland (animated episode 3)). Well, not until you get to the... GIFT SHOP. (aaahhh...)
Guarding the Art
Next March, the Baltimore Museum of Art is opening an exhibition curated entirely by 17 members of the museum's security team. “Our security officers spend more time in our galleries and living among our collection than any other staff within the institution,” said Christopher Bedford, BMA Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director. “It is their perspectives, their insights, and their relationships with the art and daily interactions with our visitors that will set the stage for Guarding the Art to be an exceptional experience.” [more inside]
A Looted Pre-Columbian Artifact is Returned in Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Museum has returned 1305 looted artifacts to Costa Rica, following the 2011 return of approximately 983 pieces. The Museum is returning approximately one third of the 16,000 looted artifacts transferred to the Museum by Minor Keith, an early 20th century railway and plantation owner who co-founded the United Fruit Company.
UK libraries and museums unite to save ‘astonishing’ lost library
[SL Guardian] From the British Library to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, a consortium of libraries and museums have come together in an “unprecedented” effort to raise £15m and save an “astonishingly important” set of literary manuscripts for the nation. [more inside]
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas on Orcinus Orca SKAAnaa
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is a contemporary visual artist that bridges Haida, Asian, and Canadian cultures and identities with his art. In this video interview [YT] he discusses his mural, Orcinus Orca SKAAnaa. The mural is part of a new exhibition from the Royal BC Museum called Orcas: Our Shared Future.
[more inside]
what is 70 meters long and has 93 penises
Its existence has been marked by turbulent periods when it was in danger or at serious risk of being damaged. After being rescued many times, the Tapestry has survived and continues to reveal its secrets today. The full Bayeux Tapestry is now accessible on every computer screen and tablet. For the first time, you will be able to freely explore the entire Tapestry with a never seen quality of images. [more inside]
"The Stories of Highland Fashion Through History"
Highland Threads -- The Exhibition: "14 key pieces from museums from all over the Highlands of Scotland, brought to you online via film and photography with supporting stories and archive images from each museum." Trailer at Vimeo. Nicola Henderson (Museums and Heritage Highland, 2/12/2021), "Introducing ... Highland Threads": "it was agreed that plans for an online exhibition focusing on a costume from each museum's collection would be developed and funding sought to support the work." BBC News (4/1/2021), "Historical clothing from 14 museums displayed online." #HighlandThreads. Upcoming events. [more inside]
Electronic Plastic
Drawing a Buddha in the Tibetan style
The Tibetan Book of Proportions is an eighteenth century manual that gives precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures. Labels for each image in the book. Clouds. Buddha face and teaching mudra. Earth touching mudra and Tara. [more inside]
Early radiosonde. Laboratory measuring cylinder. Probe?
The UK's Science Museum Group, which includes the Science and Industry Museum, the National Science Museum, the National Railway Museum, and Locomotion, have digitized a quarter of their collection and made some cool digital tools to explore it, including a traditional search engine, the Random Object Generator and a random object described by machine learning, What the machine saw. Now, you can also be the first person to digitally see an object that's never been seen.
The most popular museum on TikTok
From The Guardian: The Black Country Living Museum is an open-air attraction that tells the story of Britain’s early manufacturing history, set in the defiantly unstarry town of Dudley, in England’s industrial Midlands. Among the exhibits that have earned it a clutch of awards are two mine shafts, a lime kiln and a collection of postwar trolley buses. This month the visitor attraction gained another, more unexpected accolade, becoming – it believes – the most popular museum in the world on TikTok. [more inside]
The Curse of the Buried Treasure
Rebecca Mead tells the tale of two British detectorists who, in 2015, discovered an astonishing Viking hoard – and flouted the Treasure Act to hide their find from the authorities (The New Yorker)
1.d4 d5 2.c4
The Queen’s Gambit is a hit seven-part Netflix adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel, following the life of an orphan chess prodigy during her quest to become the world’s greatest chess player, set in the 50s and 60s. Created by Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Minority Report, Logan) and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, it has impeccable chess credentials with Garry Kasparov and Bruce Pandolfini as consultants, along with gorgeous costumes featured in a Brooklyn Museum online exhibition. agadmator breaks down the most important chess matches in the show (1, 2, 3); a chess expert on what the show gets right (NYT). [more inside]
Museums, COVID, Diversity, Deaccessioning
What we can learn from the Baltimore Museum of Art's recent deaccessioning announcement. [more inside]
A Fuller Picture of Artemisia Gentileschi
Rebecca Mead celebrates pioneering painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s harnessing of motherhood, passion, and ambition – and pushes against the notion her work was defined by surviving a rape (The New Yorker). Links to every painting referenced (Kottke). [more inside]
Open Letter About a Closed Show
Four major museums - The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston - announced they are postponing their joint retrospective of the works of Philip Guston. At issue are Guston’s paintings that feature hooded Ku Klux Klan figures.
The artist's daughter and other curators and critics criticized the decision, and now more than 100 contemporary artists have released an open letter that criticizes the move. "The people who run our great institutions do not want trouble," the letter reads. "They lack faith in the intelligence of their audience."