As Google launch their new Art Project, Florence Waters looks at how - and why - cultural institutions are smartening up their digital reputations.
FIVE MOST USEFUL
1. Europeana | europeana.eu
In January the EU published a report, ‘The New Renaissance’, ruling that by 2016 “all public domain masterpieces” in Europe should be accessible through Europeana. Funded by the EC, the site has already has 15 million items, from maps to music, donated by institutions from the British Library to the Louvre.
Browse: Austrian and German libraries have provided an encyclopaedic collection of original audio of Hitler’s compelling addresses to the Reich.
2. Google Books | books.google.com
15 million publications, encompassing the complete works of Shakespeare and every page of every issue of Life magazine. Sophisticated tools like ‘Wordle’ and ‘Ngram Viewer’ are faster and infinitely more engaging than the traditional index or database. Sorry Google-phobes, this is definitely the most browsable digital library out there.
3. Moma | moma.org/collection
The most comprehensive digital modern art archive by a single institution to date, with images of 34,000 works - the entire Moma collection, including quality reproductions of sketches, photographs and ephemera that aren’t displayed in the galleries.
Browse: some of the earliest artistic photographs ever captured, byWilliam Henry Fox Talbot, including his sublime 1844 image ‘Loch Katrine’ which must be seen in full screen.
4. Poetry Foundation | poetryfoundation.org
Essentially a multimedia magazine, but with a compendium of poems, lectures, essays and readings, the best of which are the crackly historic recordings of modern American poets reading their own work.
Browse: listen to the gravely voice of three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg deliver frank opinions about television, and perform his poem ‘For You’ to a bemused audience in Chicago, 1956.
5. Film archives | filmarchives-online.eu
A fairly dry, but easily navigable and multi-lingual umbrella site for Europe's film archives. The news board is worth watching; learn about the latest digitised restorations such as the BFI's campaign to get Hitchcock's earliest silent films digitised and available online for free.
Browse: Late Victorian and Edwardian film company Mitchell & Kenyon's charming 35mm footage of holiday makers on the Morecambe sea front, 1901.
FIVE MOST INNOVATIVE
1. Prado on Google Earth | google.com/prado
Examine up-close the brushstrokes on some of the world’s greatest masterpieces, from Velazquez to Goya, in three dimensions.
2. The Foundling Hospital | threadsoffeeling.com
More than 4,000 babies were left at the Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760. A small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. This is a touching online-only exhibition of the contents of the museum’s fabric archives, photographed in exquisite detail so that you can see the threads. [Until 6 March 2011]
3. ‘I Remain’ | digital.lib.lehigh.edu
A lovingly-compiled collection of hundreds of historic letters – many of them have been photographed with envelope still intact - spanning five centuries, and featuring records from great historic figures from Orson Welles to Bach.
4. Van Gogh’s Letters | vggallery.com/letters
You could fork out £450 for the Thames and Hudson book of Van Gogh's recently publicised illustrated letters - or, conveniently, you can view all 902 letters, translated, here.
5. Donald Judd library | library.juddfoundation.org
The artist's meticulously arranged collection of 13004 books has been recreated virtually, in illustrated form. Even if you don't like minimalist sculpture, it's worth seeing because it's beautifully conceived and a sophisticated example of just what's possible for artist’s legacies online - if they have a wealthy foundation behind them.
BEST OF BRITISH
1. Tate | tate.org.uk
The Tate’s online archive is still full of holes, but it is one of the most forward-looking. John Stack, head of Tate.org.uk, says that “the next level of museum experience is online”. He is currently working with curators and lawyers to explore new ways of presenting “the artists voice” online, through sketchbooks, letters, video and their very best archive material. The new site will launch this Spring.
2. Yorkshire Film Archive | yfaonline.com
My favourite discovery; beautifully restored shorts by amateurs and professionals dating back to the 1890s. It’s a museum in its own right, a journey through time, a funny and disturbing portrait of life in the north of England.
3. Archive of the Now | archiveofthenow.org
This compendium might as well be called ‘What is contemporary British poetry?’ A lecturer at Brunel University, Andrea Brady, has had the simple but enlightened idea of compiling an ever-growing archive of readings by well-respected poets living and working in Britain today.
Browse: Recorded after a party, in the early hours of the morning, a remarkable, highly charged audio clip of British poet J.H.Prynne reading ‘Cocaine’ by John Wieners.
4. Archive of irreverent miscellanies |digitalmiscellaniesindex.org
Oxford’s Bodleian library is home to the largest collection of out of print eighteenth-century poetic miscellanies in the world. This three-year project, still under way, aims to make them all available online, including ‘An Extempore upon a Faggot’, a ditty laden with sexual innuendo and attributed to John Milton.
5. Peel Street Caves | via nottingham.ac.uk
In 1892 the 200m-long caves became a tourist attraction known as ‘Robin Hood’s Mammoth Cave’, a former sand mine beneath the city. They are now closed to the public, but, courtesy of the Nottingham Caves Survey, you can take a journey through digitised 3D laser scans of the dimly-lit caverns. Who could possibly not be curious?
Browse: Peel Street Caves
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