Month: January 2008

Library of Congress on Flickr

Modern(ish), Multimedia

The Library of Congress has uploaded thousands of historical photographs from the 1910’s, 30’s and 40’s to Flickr. Browsing the collection is not only an ideal means to whittle away the long workweek hours, but you could also be helping the LoC improve their records.

We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

This is just the beginning. Flickr is kicking off a pilot project called The Commons based on the LoC collection which will hopefully expand to cover other collections of historical, non-copyrighted works, all of them cross-referenced and tagged by the vast usership.

Soldiers in symbol formation

Ex Cathedra

Here’s some unusual WWI photography. It’s thousands of soldiers forming a well-known image photographed from a tower.

During World War I, photographers Arthur S. Mole and John D. Thomas traveled from one military camp to another taking photos of soldiers forming patriotic symbols as a part of planned promotional campaign to sell war bonds.[…]

Mole and Thomas spent days preparing formations which were photographed from a 70 to 80 foot tower with an 11 by 14 inch camera.

Pretty nifty as war bonds campaigns go.

The Lost Picture Show

Modern(ish), Museums

The Royal Academy of Arts in London is putting on an exhibit of French and Russian modern masters. Hugely famous pieces that were kept hidden under Soviet rule are finally getting to leave the country for the first time since Lenin called art an appendix soon to be cut out.

For the first time in history, Russia’s four great state museums, the Hermitage, the Russian, the Pushkin and the Tretiakov Gallery, are joining forces to mount this blockbuster in the West. Long starved of funding, the museums badly need the cash, and the energy-industry giant Eon has sponsored the exhibition. The result is that over 150 paintings, half of them never seen before in Britain, will go on view at the RA when From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870–1925 opens later this month. Some of the greatest works by Renoir, Cézanne and Van Gogh will hang alongside those by Russia’s greatest modern artists, Chagall, Kandinsky and Malevich.

The exhibit promises to be fascinating because of the history it will reveal about the wealthy (pre-revolution) Russians who collected these wondrous pieces, Ivan Morosov and Sergei Shchukin. They went from living in palaces surrounded by Matisses, Picassos and Van Goghs, to living in shacks and guiding visitors through their former riches, to fleeing the country and dying forlorn.

That same year his private collection was nationalised too, his house later becoming part of the State Museum of Modern Western Art. For a while, Shchukin swallowed his pride, moving into the caretaker’s lodge and acting as guide and curator. But in the summer of 1918 he fled Moscow with a train ticket to Kiev, a false passport and a doll stuffed with diamonds.

Morosov, meanwhile, whose 300-strong collection of Monets, Bonnards, Gauguins and Cézannes had also been seized, was forced to work as deputy keeper of his collection, taking the proles around his beloved pictures. But when he received orders to move into the basement, he fled with his wife and children to Switzerland. He died three years later at the age of 50, no doubt broken by the loss of his homeland and his collection.

Read more about these great collectors in the Royal Academy’s magazine. Read more about the exhibit on the RA’s website.

It runs from January 25 to April 18. I shall browbeat my London stringer (that’s you, Leesifer, just in case you don’t know yet) to go and write us a review.

Update: Restoring Medieval Kabul

Medieval, Social policy

Way back in the June of 2006 I posted about a the Turquoise Mountain Foundation‘s efforts to restore the medieval Kabul neighborhood of Murad Khane and revive the traditional local crafts of calligraphy, woodcarving and ceramics.

Now it seems that those efforts are paying off enormously, and that can only improve with the $3.5 million dollar donation they’ve just received from the Canadian government.

One-and-a-half years along, the scene just beyond the north bank of the Kabul River is impressive. A fleet of more than 50 wheelbarrows criss-crosses constantly, hacking through and carting away decades of chest-high waste from the last of four traditional courtyard houses targeted for renewal.

In their wake, aging craftsman lead teams of young men newly schooled in Afghan joinery in restoring the skeletal timber-frame buildings. A few of these homes remain diamonds in the rough, but one, known as The Peacock House for its distinctive feathered Nuristani marquetry panels, is already a shining jewel.

Not only are the restorations coming along at a brisk pace, but the craft school is a raging success as well, with ten times the expected number of applicants and big money commissions for their wares from British hotels and Arab collectors.

Update: © Egypt

Ancient, Social policy

Akhenaten and family worshiping the copyright AtenAn update to this entry on Egypt proposed law to copyright their ancient artifacts. Eric Kansa at iCommons has a piercing analysis of the law as an instrument of nationalism, a way for countries whose cultural patrimony has been used by external powers for centuries to get a little of their own back via intellectual property legislation.

It’s understandable because the U.S. and the European Union have long advocated intellectual property maximalism (expanding the scope and reach of copyright and patents), usually to the disadvantage of the developing world. The Egyptian case, in many ways, reflects a growing trend on the part of the “Global South” to attempt to use their own versions of intellectual property protectionism for their advantage. For example, Peru has laws to regulate access to genetic resources of its natural heritage. Similarly, India has also enacted legislation to protect some traditional medical knowledge. The issue of “bio-piracy” in general reflects how nations in the developing world as well as some indigenous communities are attempting to use intellectual property legal frameworks to benefit from developments in biotechnology.

Egypt in particular has incentive to deploy IP in this manner, given how dependent the Egyptian economy is on tourism and how cash-strapped the Supreme Council for Antiquities is.

Egypt’s case is interesting, because of the complex role that the legacy of the Pharaohs plays in modern Egyptian politics and identity. Many Egyptians take great pride in the accomplishments of the ancient civilization on the Nile, but this view is also tempered by an Islamic world-view that sees the Pharaonic past as part of a pagan age of darkness and ignorance. In any event, Egyptian policy makers are acutely aware of both how the international IPR regime stacks the deck against them, and also how important antiquities are to their economy. The Supreme Council for Antiquities is resource-starved and has great difficulty paying for the upkeep and maintenance of thousands of monuments situated among a poor and rapidly growing population. Since tourism is so strategically important for Egypt, perhaps any competition in the tourist experience of Egyptian antiquities may be something of an economic threat – hence, the move to monopolise the legacy of the Pharaohs.

Anyway, read the whole article ’cause it’s smrt.