The Rijksstudio online resource allows visitors to create their own curated collections and save details of works for reproduction. Being able to see and download high resolution images is worth the view.

Some highlights: At the Bundy Museum of History and Art “Here and There: Poets from Near and Far” from 7-9 PM, held in the museum’s Annex Theater.

Blueprint Binghamton Design Studio (49 Court St., Metrocenter Plaza) presents another interactive exhibit and pop-up gallery which invites the community to share their ideas for a sustainable and growing city.

If you missed it the first time around, check out Whatever Comes | Teknari exhibition at the Brunelli Gallery.

Check out Carolyn Gilligan and Ken Weir’s watercolors and paintings at the Cooperative Gallery on State Street.

Take the free historic trolly and see much more!

"Woman in an Armchair (Eva)" by Pablo Picasso, 1913. Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection; 2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

One of New York’s most prominent collectors, Leonard Lauder, is giving a priceless collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art–priceless to the tune of a billion dollars worth of work and substantial recognition for the MET as a go-to institution for Modern Art. This exciting new collection of Cubist art will be on display sometime in 2014.

From the Times:

In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Picasso’s “Head of a Man,” 1908.

The trove of signature works, which includes 33 Picassos, 17 Braques, 14 Légers and 14 works by Gris, is valued at more than $1 billion. It puts Mr. Lauder, who for years has been one of the city’s most influential art patrons, in a class with cornerstone contributors to the museum like Michael C. Rockefeller, Walter Annenberg, Henry Osborne Havemeyer and Robert Lehman.

The gift was approved by the Met’s board at a meeting Tuesday afternoon.

Scholars say the collection is among the world’s greatest, as good as, if not better than, the renowned Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures in institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Together they tell the story of a movement that revolutionized Modern art and fill a glaring gap in the Met’s collection, which has been notably weak in early-20th-century art.

“In one fell swoop this puts the Met at the forefront of early-20th-century art,” Thomas P. Campbell, the Met’s director, said. “It is an unreproducible collection, something museum directors only dream about.”

more…

From the DPLA Concept Note:

“The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, to all. The DPLA’s primary focus is on making available materials from the United States. By adhering to the fundamental principle of free and universal access to knowledge, it will promote education in the broadest sense of the term. That is, it will function as an online library for students of all ages, from grades K-12 to postdoctoral researchers and anyone seeking self-instruction; it will be a deep resource for community colleges, vocational schools, colleges, universities, and adult education programs; it will supplement the services of public libraries in every corner of the country; and it will satisfy other needs as well—the need for data related to employment, for practical information of all kinds, and for enrichment in the use of leisure.”

From Robert Darnton, The New York Review of Books:

The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge. How is that possible? In order to answer that question, I would like to describe the first steps and immediate future of the DPLA. But before going into detail, I think it important to stand back and take a broad view of how such an ambitious undertaking fits into the development of what we commonly call an information society.

more…

From Inside Binghamton University:

Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Art and Art History and the University Art Museum invite the campus community to an exhibition of photographs of the original Yankee Stadium by Jon Plasse ‘72, to be displayed in the The Elsie B. Rosefsky Memorial Art Gallery. An opening reception for The Stadium: Images and Voices of the Original Yankee Stadium will take place from 6-8 p.m. Monday, April 8, in the Grand Grand Corridor of the Fine Arts Building.

Plasse’s black-and-white images bring to life the emotional and visual experience of the original Yankee Stadium, recalling a special time when children and their parents, joined by thousands of other fans, spent a joyful afternoon or evening together, watching their heroes.

The exhibit will be on display and open to the public from April 9-19 during regular museum hours at the Rosefsky Gallery: Tuesday – Saturday: noon-4 p.m.; Thursday: noon-7 p.m. If you plan on attending the opening reception, RSVP to Diane Horvath at 777-6799 or dmhorv@binghamton.edu. For more information, contact Lee Nesslage at 607-777-4278 or nesslage@binghamton.edu.

Take an art-filled local spring break on First Friday! Among the arty choices … a demolition derby photo exhibit and the held-over “Voices from the Castle” show, to a Binghamton University Flute trio performance at the United Presbyterian Church (42 Chenango St.) and excerpts from West Side Story at the Tabernacle United Methodist Church (83 Main St., corner Arthur St.) to baseball book signing at RiverRead Books (5 Court St.)… all at the next First Friday Art Walk in Binghamton, NY, on April 5.

Begin downtown at “CRASH BURN LOVE, Demolition Derby” Exhibit at the Broome County Arts Council (81 State St., 5th Fl., Suite 501, Stephens Sq. bldg., Binghamton).
This exhibit features black and white images by Pennsylvania photographer Bill Lowenburg that explore crashed cars, stacked junkyards and the people who love demolition derby. Lowenburg describes his show as: “a post Industrial Age ritual of redemption & resurrection” that drives some to ‘crash for money,’ ‘for love,’ or ‘to feel what it’s like to survive’” (Exhibition thru May 17, 2013).

Next, be sure to visit the compelling “Voices from the Castle” exhibit, held over for a 2nd month at PAST/Preservation Association of Southern Tier (89 Court St. at the roundabout, Perry Bldg., 1st Fl.), featuring stories of 10 patients at Binghamton State Hospital, collected from former employees, residents and their descendants. The stories date from 1900 through the 1960s, were compiled by Roger Luther (from PAST), and presented with current interior photographs of the historic asylum.

more…

AKL Online is the world’s most contemporary, reliable and extensive reference work on artists with biographical information on more than 1 million visual artists from all over the world and throughout the ages, from antiquity to the present. The advantages of the database:

• Over 1 million artists from A to Z
• Over 500,000 extensive signed biographical articles, searchable in full text – with a further 3,500 added each year
• Regular updates: details, exhibitions and sources are continually supplemented and updated
• Numerous search criteria – for professional and scholarly searches
• Explanations of the used abbreviations.

Find AKL on the Trial Databases site on the Library Homepage.

Trial ends April 27, 2013

Film historian recasts ‘Big Lebowski’ as art

By Todd R. McAdam
Published on February 26, 2013

Brian Wall is glad his 8-year-old is finally out of that Disney princess film stage. And he doesn’t always look forward to watching the latest blockbuster, either.

It’s the downside of the medium — films are made for profit. “If Hollywood is going to invest X millions of dollars, it has to appeal to everybody, which means it doesn’t appeal to anybody,” said Wall, an assistant professor of cinema and art history at Binghamton University.

That sounds like what his latest research interest — Theodor Adorno — might say. Adorno, about whom Wall is writing a book, was a composer and neo-Marxist social thinker of the Franklin School who turned his attention to popular media.

“The sheer idiocy of a mass product created especially for you assumes the character of a ghastly necessity,” Adorno wrote. “Individual needs have been so ruthlessly eliminated from the product that they have to be involved like magic formulae to prevent the customer from becoming aware of the murderous ritual of which he is the victim.”

more…

Access the LACMA Collection on the Art & Architecture subject guide “Image Databases” page.

From the Binghamton Art History Blog:

Assistant Professor Kevin Hatch will give a talk on Thursday, March 21, hosted by the Department of Art within the School of Creative Arts at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The talk considers the complexities of medium, genre, space, and spectatorship that have attended the rise of the large-scale projected-image installation in contemporary art, using recent work by Steve McQueen as its case study. For additional details, see the Miami Art Department website.

Read up on artist Steve McQueen’s work at the library, in interviews, and reviews of his recent exhibitions.